My 850 Wagon is consuming oil at the rate of 1Qt/250 miles. I see white smoke behind me when ever I acclerate ( from complete stop ). After reaching a steady speed the smoke disappears.

The car has 160K miles on it and works perfectly otherwise. I had replaced the oil cap on the engine and the dip stick a year ago in order to stop oil from spraying in side the engine compartment. I do not see any visible leakage, either on top of the engine or on the road.

Any pointers on what could be wrong and approx $$ for the repair will be much appreciated.

Thank you for your help.

tinmanpa:

check if you are leaking oil from below. just place a newspaper under the car's engine overnite and see if you get stains. the fact that you were having oil spraying in the inside indicates that you had high pressures due to blocked flame trap (assuming your car is non-turbo like mine). in that case, your rear main seal may have gone bad...

Thank you for the responses to my Query. I did get the Coolant changed couple of months back. The white smoke problem seems to have started at that point.

Did they pressure check the cooling system when the coolant was replaced? I've heard horror stories about head gaskets being breached by pressure tests, but not in a Volvo yet.

Have you noticed the coolant level dropping?

If so, it is possible you're pulling coolant into a cylinder. Pull the spark plugs and have a look at them for signs of contaminants, including oil.

Also, if your's is a turbo, they have an oil cooler in the passenger-side radiator tank. If it's leaking you could be losing oil into your radiator and also be finding water in your oil.

So you have a couple of admittedly bad scenarios. Bad head gasket (allowing oil and coolant into cylinder(s)), bad oil cooler (turbo model), warped head. Has it ever seriously overheated?

Again, pull the plugs and see which cylinder(s) are suspect.

Good luck,
Erwin

What you are describing is not good news. Your engine is burning coolant via a cracked head or blown head gasket among possible other causes. If I'm right, you are looking at lot's of $$$ for repair.
--
'82 240DL Stock / Masters Class, '94 850 Fully Loaded / Daily Driver, CVC / VCOA Member http://www.capcan.com/tonyg.htm

white smoke is not oil, most likely coolant. blue/black is oil.

If you are spraying oil out of your dipstick then you have to much crank pressure, and need to clean you PCV valve. Look in your haynes manual for its location and then clean it very well with carb cleaner and a wire brush. Also do your egr valve while you are at it.

not hard at all, just requires some time...

Volvospeed has instructions for this at

http://www.volvospeed.com/Repair/egr.htm

I (a beginner) did this myself last weekend with only a screwdriver, some carb cleaner and a rachet set (to loosen the pipe clamps on air cleaner pipes).

I did not remove the air cleaner itself, just the top and the air cleaner hose, air intake hose and the Throttle body. Everything else I left in place even if it suggested otherwise. Took me about 1/2 hour to get at the EGR, about 3 hours totalto gouge out all the gunk in there, and about 20 min to put everything back together.

After doing this, my car passed smog (failed the first time) and consuming less oil!

White smoke sounds like coolant burning however blue smoke would be oil. Burning coolant very bad!