so lets play a game. by the short description given and the pictures, tell me exactly whats wrong with the car.



car was running fine, however it got the famous misfire code on cylinder 3 when in 5th gear. then about a week before garaging it i started getting tons of white smoke out the exhaust. checked the oil and it was low and black, so did an oil change and turned the car on. after about a minute the smoke came back....

went to change spark plugs, all were fine minus cylinder three, which looks like this:



upon taking the exhaust manifold off, cylinder 3 looked like this:





and did a coolant compression test which came back fine so it shouldnt be the head gasket



so, lets play "whats wrong with it"

 

Usually when a plug is toast like that so is the cylinder that it fires for. Looks like detonation and the white smoke it probably blow-by (oil).

 

You've obviously got oil in cylinder 3, and it's somewhere in the head as you don't see it in the others.

You've got to take the head off to find out and fix what's wrong anyway, so why bother guessing? Grab the wrenches. You've got a bad head gasket, valve guide, piston rings... etc.

Just because you did a coolant compression test, doesn't mean the head gasket is fine. If you want to test it more... do a cylinder compression test which is going to tell you that #3 is low, and you'll need to take the head off. So you might as well do that now.

 

Valve Guide Seals?

 

was told it would be more hassle to get down to the head myself than to just hook everything back up. all id need to do is take off my timing belt then pull off the head and its bolts. but was told if its the piston rings or anything else, itll be 10x more work than what ive already put into it. so, sadly gonna have to just put it together and take it to the ****ty *** lemon dealer and see what theyll do. if not take out another loan to get it fixed. :\

 

Before you took it apart I assume you tried a fresh set of plugs to see if that helped?

 

that i did. and started it back up seemed fine then after a couple minutes started smoking pulled the plug and wasnt caked with **** but was alrdy blacked out.

 

Do compression, sounds like you got possible bent/burnt valve. Does it sound funny idling? like a subaru. First step is compression

 

First, do a compression test. If cylinder #3 is 14 PSI< than the other three cylinders, or less than 130 PSI, then do a leakdown test. But, I lean toward what JohnnyTSi said....valve guides and seals and hopefully not rings. Good Luck!

 

Sounds like a broken piston cracked or compressed/broken ring.

 

dude i had the same problem, my motor is being tore apart today ill let you know here shortly

 

any info yet on your car?

 

correct broken piston

 

game over i guess LOL. GL