Diesel engine smoke.

[slaphead]

Just bought a '99 Astra TD van and noticed it produces a lot of white smoke from the exhaust when the engines cold and puffs out a small amount of black/grey smoke whilst i'm driving. Is this normal for a diesel engine? The vans covered 76k miles and seems to run sweetly.

[sddsddean]

A diesel exhaust will always look 'dirtier' than a petrol. If you have it on tickover and floor the accelerator (whilst in neutral!), does it sound as if one cylinder is missing? If so, could be you have got a dodgy injector.(This would also account for the smoke). You should be able to get the van tested (on a Crypton or similar) at a decent garage, or look in Yellow Pages for a diesel engine specialist. Injectors for my truck are about �30 each exchange, so hopefully for a van they would be about �10 each, but don't hold me to it!!

[Postie]

My last set of injectors for a 2litre Perkins were around �60 but I don't think that's your problem. I'm more inclined to think that you have a head gasket failure (a small one which seals itself when the engine warms up) the white smoke you see is probably steam from condensation ingress.