Burning smell, light smoke from engine bay

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theophile

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2002 V8, completely stock. I got out of the car after arriving at work this morning and caught a faint smell of burning/melting rubber. They're blacktopping a new road nearby so I assumed it was that, but bent down to sniff where the hood meets the fender just in case. The smell was definitely coming from there so I popped the hood. There were some wisps of smoke coming from the right (driver) side of the engine compartment towards the back (firewall). I could not tell where the smoke was originating, but it was drifting up around the coolant bottle/brake reservoir area.

I turned the engine back on to watch/listen/smell, but everything seemed OK. I let it run for about a minute but didn't see the smoke return. I wasn't dressed for much more than that, so I haven't pulled off the cover or anything yet. But I do not see any fluid leaks and nothing is dripping from underneath. Also, the temp gauge is right at the middle, so it's not (apparently) overheating. No CEL.

The oil dipstick doesn't smell burnt, and other hydraulic fluids are at proper levels and do not appear to be contaminated. My first thought from the smell was rubber rather than burning fluid, so possibly a belt. The smell was also reminiscent of the smell my old '92 Escort produced the day or two before the clutch (manual transmission) finally stripped out.

I am of course going to keep an eye on it, will check it when I get home, and will of course make time to get up into the engine bay to inspect properly. But in the meantime, I'd appreciate hearing any suggestions or ideas you might have as to possible things to check or pay special attention to. I've owned the car for about 5 months but have not yet really gotten up into the engine bay to learn it.

Thanks all!
 
I'd make leaking valve cover gaskets my first suspect from that description.
 
Ah, thank you for that. Looks like I'll take advantage of the opportunity to replace plugs and COPs too.

What COPs should I buy?

(just kidding!!!)
 
Before I replaced my VCGs, it smelled more like burning rubber than burning oil. I also had light smoke from under the hood that only lasted a few minutes once warm and wouldn't come back until the car sat overnight (or longer).
 
Confirmed valve cover gasket failure. I started the job last night and got as far as removing the coil cover and coils from the passenger side. All four boots were coated in oil and oil has pooled in the plug wells. I would have gotten the driver side coil cover off except I couldn't quite get a ratchet on that bottom bolt closest to the firewall and I didn't have a 7mm wrench.

New parts and Accel coils come in today. I want to use the Accel boots because they seal the plug wells better, but I don't have the mounting bracket Hite makes and I've not been able to determine whether they are still available. I'm going to have to improvise for the time being using washers or something.
 
Accel coil bolt holes are closer to the coil than the regular motorcrafts in addition to being taller. Hite's brackets are L shaped. As far as I know the brackets are always available; its Hite's time that's not always available. My set took a little extra machining, unfortunately.
 
LSFrank said:
Accel coil bolt holes are closer to the coil than the regular motorcrafts in addition to being taller. Hite's brackets are L shaped. As far as I know the brackets are always available; its Hite's time that's not always available. My set took a little extra machining, unfortunately.
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I understand. Unfortunately, as my car is a DD, I have to get it back up within the next day or two. I've looked at the pics of the L-shaped brackets and the way they are installed, and I think I may be able to achieve a similar result that should tide me over until I can get a set of the brackets. My plan is to get some washers that are just wide enough to push down on the COP's mounting hole, rather than big enough to press down on the back of the COP itself (as the original "fender washer" method did). Then I will drill a hole in the ring of the washer so it can be bolted to the COP mounting tab, essentially extending the tab, and then I can drive the stock bolt (or possibly a longer one) through the center of the washer to secure the COP in place. I know that with this method, it won't be possible to tighten the main bolt all the way down because the Accel COP protrudes a bit further with the Accel boot as opposed to the stock COP with stock boot. But due to the tight seal created by the Accel boot, I think this method should keep the COP securely in the well.

I suppose there is a risk of the bolt slowly backing out due to the fact that it won't be torqued down all the way. I may use a dab of Loctite to compensate for this, or (depending on how much room there is to work) may try to use a small lock washer and a backing nut to "sandwich" the washer in place.
 
Lord have mercy, that driver's side valve cover is a P.I.T.A. I had to break the bolts free with the ratchet then just use the socket and my fingers to spin the bolts out. I can't imagine how I'm going to get a torque wrench on there when it's time to put it all back together. I actually had to stop for the night because I forgot to pick up a fuel-line release tool and without that, I can't get the driver's side valve cover out (although it is now loose in the engine bay).

I did manage to reverse all my wires though. Like most people have reported, I vaporized that red plastic spacer in the first plug I did. I figured out the trick on the second one, although I still ended up breaking it in the process. The next 6 went perfectly without breaking.

All 8 plug wells were filled with oil and all 8 COP boots were completely saturated. Also, it looks like the previous owner may havehad a couple of aftermarket COPs installed. 5 or 6 of them had the Ford sticker on the top, but the others looked to be generic black parts with no label. They didn't even match each other.

Given the fact that I have apparently been driving around with mismatched COPs that are all swimming in engine oil, I'm pretty excited about finishing this up and seeing how it performs with new seals, new oil, new NGK iridium plugs, and the Accel coils.
 
I wouldn't worry about the torque wrench. Just pay close attention to how much effort it takes to get the correct torque on the bolts you can get to, then apply the same amount of effort to the one that you can't get the wrench on. The only thing I've ever heard of it being critical to get the exact torque amount on under the hood of a car is the knock sensors and that's because the torque of the knock sensor directly affects how sensitive the knock sensor is. The tighter it is, the more sensitive it is. Just what I hear though, no idea how accurate this is.
 
The valve covers are plastic. I would tighten them to the correct torque in the correct sequence. (This is not to say that you can't get away with just doing it by feel.)
 
I'm definitely going to torque them down to spec. I don't want to risk early gasket failure because I definitely don't want to do this job again anytime soon.

As for sequence, I've read to tighten them from the inside working out, but I haven't seen a bolt sequence. Joegr, is there a specific bolt sequence?
 
theophile said:
I'm definitely going to torque them down to spec. I don't want to risk early gasket failure because I definitely don't want to do this job again anytime soon.

As for sequence, I've read to tighten them from the inside working out, but I haven't seen a bolt sequence. Joegr, is there a specific bolt sequence?
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Here.....

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Telco said:
I wouldn't worry about the torque wrench. Just pay close attention to how much effort it takes to get the correct torque on the bolts you can get to, then apply the same amount of effort to the one that you can't get the wrench on. The only thing I've ever heard of it being critical to get the exact torque amount on under the hood of a car is the knock sensors and that's because the torque of the knock sensor directly affects how sensitive the knock sensor is. The tighter it is, the more sensitive it is. Just what I hear though, no idea how accurate this is.
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After rereading my post and the following responses I now feel I might not have gotten what I meant to say across here. You want to use the torque wrench, but on the one you can't reach you should have a good enough feel on how much torque to apply on the bolts you can reach with the torque wrench to be able to feel how much torque to apply to the one it won't reach.
 
Telco said:
After rereading my post and the following responses I now feel I might not have gotten what I meant to say across here. You want to use the torque wrench, but on the one you can't reach you should have a good enough feel on how much torque to apply on the bolts you can reach with the torque wrench to be able to feel how much torque to apply to the one it won't reach.
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I see. That I agree with.
 
All right. VCGs replaced along with plug well seals, etc. New NGK iridium plugs, and did the Accel COP install. Yes, I swapped all the pins in the wire harnesses. Fired right up the first time and gave me smoke from the tailpipe. I suppose that's too be expected. It cleared up after a minute, though now I'm getting a rough idle. I'm hoping that's normal for the first few miles, though I bet it's probably not. :(
 
theophile said:
now I'm getting a rough idle. I'm hoping that's normal for the first few miles, though I bet it's probably not. :(
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Not normal. Did you seat the coils correctly onto the plugs? Did you ensure that each clip was clipped and snapped in properly for the coils? Did you correctly gap the plugs?
 
Did you let any oil in the wells drain into the cylinder(s)?
 
I'm not sure whether the coils seated properly on the plugs. On my previous car it was easy to tell because you could feel the wire snap down onto the plug. But these COPs have a spring inside the boot. Plus the Accels have that thick rubber flange near the top of the boot, and I had coated the inside and outside of the boot with dielectric grease. So when installing the COPs, I pushed the boot down the plug well until it met resistance from the rubber flange, then pressed some more until the flange popped down into the well. The boot felt pretty well situated at this point.

I do not have the custom spacers for the Accels, but I noticed on another thread someone simply using the stock bolt and the stock mounting hole. When I did mine I found that there was enough lateral "play" that I could do this, so that's what I did. Each one is bolted down using the stock bolt through the Accel mounting hole and into the stock mount location.

I did not regap the plugs. I had read that NGKs don't need to be regapped.

It is entirely possible that some oil could have drained into the cylinder. I did my absolute best to sop up as much of the oil as posible before removing the old plugs. In fact, I spent hours working on it. But there were a couple of occasions when I noticed oil coating the threads of the plug upon removal, which makes me think some oil could have gotten through doing this process. If so, I don't think it would have been much. But I do think this may have contributed to the initial cloud of smoke that came from the tailpipe when I started it.

I've got a bluetooth OBD2 dongle and a handful of Android apps that can talk to it. I'm going to poke around with it and see if I can get it to tell me which cylinder(s) is experiencing the issue. If you happen to know the way to do this, I'm all ears.

Thanks everyone.
 
theophile said:
...I did not regap the plugs. I had read that NGKs don't need to be regapped...
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Where did you read that?
I've installed three sets of NGKs now, and at least two of every set had the wrong gap.
 
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