Somethin's burnin

I dont know were it coming from all fluid levels are fine and you see a little smoke and everyone else sees it and smells it any ideas?It smeeled like it was on fire todayand the smell is starting to come in the heep.TIA

Under the hood? Electrical smell or oil smell?

Look for frying wires or ye old leaky valve cover.

anodyne33 said:

Under the hood? Electrical smell or oil smell?

Look for frying wires or ye old leaky valve cover.

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I thought it might be a rear main seal but checked the oil,and its fine checkd tranny fluid,its fine.Its def oil of some sort,and does not not leave drips on the ground and it only does it when I go and let it warm up a few.I have a vac leak that I cant find so,when it does warm up it idels very high.

Buy a fire extinguisher!!!!!!!!! They are life savers. I had to use mine when the shop that put in my 3.1 crate motor left a gas/oil soaked rag stuffed between the black and the header. They paid for the damage though just some wires and the white shit all over everything. But it shure beat watching my rig go Kaboom

HogWash said:

I thought it might be a rear main seal but checked the oil,and its fine checkd tranny fluid,its fine.Its def oil of some sort,and does not not leave drips on the ground and it only does it when I go and let it warm up a few.

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Check the valve cover; you may have a leak from it that's hard to see. There's also the oil filter - they've been known to work out and/or have the O-rings go bad. Also inspect the power steering and transmission lines.

When the rear main starts to seep the oil will collect some inside the bell housing and drip onto the top of the cross over exhaust pipe. a leaky rear valve cover gasket will drip in the same spot onto the exhaust cross over. Sometimes a valve cover gasket will seep onto the exhaust manifold.
A little oil seep goes a long way, you might not notice any, if much, difference on the dipstick. If your oil is fresh and almost clear, the leak can be hard to spot. A white piece of paper towel wiped in likely spots, shows an oil stain quick.

8Mud said:

When the rear main starts to seep the oil will collect some inside the bell housing and drip onto the top of the cross over exhaust pipe. a leaky rear valve cover gasket will drip in the same spot onto the exhaust cross over. Sometimes a valve cover gasket will seep onto the exhaust manifold.
A little oil seep goes a long way, you might not notice any, if much, difference on the dipstick. If your oil is fresh and almost clear, the leak can be hard to spot. A white piece of paper towel wiped in likely spots, shows an oil stain quick.

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That sounds like it!But the oil levels havent changed.Is that something you can deal with besides the burning smell or is it something I need to get fixed pronto? I did change the oil about 1,000 miles ago.And also,some one posted something about haveing some sort of buildup inthere dist. cap Im haveing the same problem what can cause this?.Im thinking about bumping my ignition set up over to an MSD just so I dont have this problem anymore.Any insight or any other options?TIA

I just went through this for the second time on the day before yesterday.

About 3 weeks ago...driving home from school for the weekend...about a 90 mile drive down the highway. I get to town and get off the highway and i smell burning oil....didn't think much of it as some ragged out POS was sitting next to me. I got home and sure enough I smell it again and see smoke this time.....oil filter adaptor o-ring was SHOT....solved my problem of oil "seeping" from somewhere that had been occuring for about a year....no more oily transmission pan and bellhousing untill this week.

Fast forward to Wednesday of this week. I'm driving around in Charlotte...about 30 miles away from my school in an area i am not at all familiar with. I get stuck in heavy stop and go traffic for over an hour....lots of gear changes b/w first and second...cooked the brakes (almost completely...smelled them burning). Anyways, I finally get through the mess and get back up to highway speed for about a minute before my exit comes up. I proceed to slow down and the minute i let off the gas i hear and feel a very loud CLUNK....almost like tranny related, it came out of over drive REALLY hard. I glanced in my mirror and there is a hell of a smoke show behind me, and I can't even see the vehicle behind me...all I saw was there head lights.

I pulled over immediately and cut it off thinking i had seriously blown something major....once again, just like with the oil filter adaptor, everything underneath the Jeep is covered with oil...tranny, tcase, rear axle..etc. I managed to get it back to school after letting it sit to cool off for about an hour or so...and i'm hoping i can get it the 90 miles back home tomorrow to my good tools and shop and start looking it over better.

Right now i'm fearing rear main, but it's been a year and a half or so since i've changed the valve cover gasket....and i'm really praying that it just needs to be changed again, and it's leaking from the back of the cover.

Total milage on my Jeep is about to hit 88K.

In this latest show, I checked the oil and it was not registering low at all...still showed 6 quarts....so i'm thinking it just dumped a bit real quick, just enough to make ALOT of smoke.

So what i'm getting at here is, a leaky valve cover gasket (very easy to change), a bad oil filter adaptor o-ring (moderately easy to change provided you have a good T60 torx bit), and a bad rear main (which is not so easy to change compared to the other two) all show the same signs of a leaking rear main. And all three are very common on the 4.0.

My advice to you, take it to a do it yourself carwash (or if you have a pressure washer) and wash the hell out of everything underneath the jeep, that way you can begin to track down the problem.

As mentioned before, the oil will run down the bellhousing and hit that portion of the exhaust pipe that is right there...so thats where your "burning oil" is likely coming from.

One more thing i'll add is right before my oil filter adaptor seal let go, I noticed some oil on the bottom of my filter...so you might check there too.

And for the record what are we talking about here? Meaning what year is your Jeep, assuming 4.0, milage..etc etc.

I have oil in my dist also what cause's this? Not a lot but it is there.

87 wagoneer,4.0,aw4,speedo had 360,000 before I changed it out due to the guages were not working properly.any thing I missed?Oh how hard is it to change the o-ring you were talking about?

Here's the link to Jim's write up that I used:

http://www.yuccaman.com/jeep/filter.html

It's not a hard job, provided you have a small enough T60 bit and some time.

Thanx 99xj,Illl look into it a little more when I actually get a warmer day.

HogWash said:

Thanx 99xj,Illl look into it a little more when I actually get a warmer day.

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Sure thing buddy....but if I were you, since you said you can see it and smell it, i'd check it ASAP, that way you know what it is and how much is leaking out.

Untill then i'd just keep an eye on the oil level.

If you're getting oil in the distributor as well as a new leak, you might want to make sure your crankcase venting is working properly so that you're not getting too much crankcase pressure. The little vacuum tube at the rear of the valve cover can get pretty crusty inside.

I've had various leaks on my Jeeps. If you're not getting a really nasty drip on the ground when you park, you probably aren't losing enough to bother the oil levels, but it can still make a mess and stink when it hits the exhaust,, and the spray can slime up your rear window too.

Rear seals seem to start leaking but then don't really dump all that much for a long time. The oil filter adapter o-rings can get worse over time, though, and end up dumping a lot of oil pretty quickly.

If your vehicle is an 87, it's much easier to remove the oil filter adapter than it is on the later ones, because it should be just a regular hex bolt, rather than a very hard-to access Torx. So don't be daunted by the accounts of doing it on later models.

Matthew Currie said:

If you're getting oil in the distributor as well as a new leak, you might want to make sure your crankcase venting is working properly so that you're not getting too much crankcase pressure. The little vacuum tube at the rear of the valve cover can get pretty crusty inside.

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I'm hunting a mysterious disappearing oil problem on my XJ. It was dropping tons of oil when I got it, but I replaced all main gaskets & seals. I checked the oil yesterday after about 180 miles after the oil change, and it was a quart low. I looked around for signs of a leak and found nothing. After topping it off, I drove about 20 miles today, and checked the oil again tonight.... another quart low? So, I've topped it off and tossed my extra 6 quarts in the backseat for tomorrow. I still don't see any oil leaks at any of the gaskets or seals that I replaced.
Except.... I really think I'm noticing more and more wet oil on the valve cover. Not down at the gasket, but on the actual ridged top. It looks to have some extra oil sheen around the CC cap, and around the fresh air intake hose. I only replaced 2/3'rds of the CCV system due to NAPA ordering the CC side of the FAI harness twice. I just haven't been back to pick up the airbox side yet, so it remains half broken/disconnected as the old harness on that side. The FAI hose doesn't connect to anything on the airbox side of the harness. I noticed that the rear CCV grommet was really gunked up when I changed it, and I failed to dissassemble and clean the CCV filters in the actual valve cover.
I've also noticed that the oil seems to be way too black for only having ~180 miles on it, so I think that a lot of sludge has possibly been knocked loose by the 10W30 I'm running. At this point, I'm planning to run Seafoam through the CCV/CC and a bit directly into the intake and change to a heavier weight oil. I think I'm getting some piston ring blowby that I didn't get before the oil change. I have to wonder what the PO was running in that engine (reman w/ just 36K) and how it could possibly be in such rough shape at such a low mileage.
Does this sound like too much crankcase pressure? Maybe caused by the clogged CCV or piston ring blowby? Any suggestions or hope for my approach to fixing it? Thanks.
And sorry for the threadjack.

You'd be amazed at how smelly and smoky a tiny bit of oil can be when it hits the exhaust. It's not enough to notice a loss in the short term, but you know it when it's warmed. Get a fire extinguisher, and start tracking down the source of that leak. Hit my link above for the oil filter adapter replacement - I never got my rear main seal writeup in there.

Driving around during lunch I think that I may've figured out where my mystery oil leak is. I drive the highway to work about 12 miles, no stops if I catch a couple of lights. I checked my oil on a cold engine before I went out for lunch and it was still on the full mark. As I was driving around town in decent stop and go traffic, I noticed that I was blowing out a bunch of smoke if I would give a bit of extra gas on takeoff. It looked white to me, but I've eliminated my coolant leaks, so I may be wrong.
That would also make sense as to why the car only dropped a couple of quarts on a 200 mile highway trip with a couple of mountains, pit stops, and some stop and go traffic. But when I drove it 40 or so miles in city traffic with lots of stop and go, it dropped a quart fast. Wouldn't that suggest bad valve seals? I haven't done my research on it yet, but that's the way I'm heading. Would bad valve seals also lead to crankcase pressure being too high and blowing oil out of the CCV system?
I picked up the remainder of the FAI/CCV set, but will likely wait until I do the Seafoam motor flush to install it. Does anyone know where I can find a good vacuum diagram (or picture) to help me find the locations for all of the smaller diameter hoses? Thank you.

Could be the plug for your HVAC blower switch......

Blaine B. said:

Could be the plug for your HVAC blower switch......

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Huh?
Please excuse my ignorance, but who what where? I'm super busy right now, so I can't think it through myself. What would be the issue and the result? It's clogged and creating too high of pressure in the CC? I just figured out earlier today that the vacuum canister in the bumper is totally disconnected from everything, but that wouldn't effect anything, would it?

Is it an interior "burning" smell?

The plug behind the HVAC controls (or, cabin temp controls) that plugs onto the fan (blower) switch usually melts overtime, and you may smell a burnt smell coming from this. Usually nobody gets a fire, but, they commonly melt. I'm not sure why, I'm guessing Jeep never caught this and kept on using the same plugs which are probably underrated for the application and amperage used by the blower.