Hi all,

First a bit of the history:

Engine is a 1.4 16v. Last year I had a water leak from the thermostat housing - it was cracked and I replaced it. 1 week later there was another water leak, this time from the water pump so I replaced it; I did the timing belt at the same time. On the test drive the crankshaft bolt came loose (I followed the instructions to the letter +10Nm of torque but no mention of loctite). Bang goes 10 valves.

I replaced all the head gaskets, valve stem seals, lapped the valves with coarse and fine paste, new plugs, new HT leads, new tank of fuel etc etc... car now runs sweet as a nut with much more power than it had before BUT there's white smoke.

Took the car to get MOT'd but they refused to test it due to the amount of smoke coming out. It seems to be consuming a bit of coolant and the exhaust fume smell is pretty normal to me.

We have been scratching our heads but have no idea where to head now...

Please, any suggestions?!

Maybe try leaving it running for a couple of hours and see if that clears it


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Consuming coolant is the clue. 

As for the crank bolt coming loose, did you use a new bolt? Done loads of timing belts on these engines and never had an issue with the bolt coming loose so I can only imagine it was never torqued correctly in the first place. I've never put loctite on one yet.

is this white smoke actually steam?  due to head gasket leaking coolant into the cylinders?    if you torqued the crankshaft bolt and had a problem with that could it mean that there is a problem with your torque wrench and hence the head bolts are not done up correctly allowing the head gasket to leak?