White cloud...

[braderz]

Started up this morning, and i notice the car chuck out a big (like car size) cloud of white smoke. Whats the cause of it? The car started fine, but its never chucked out that much, especially white anyway. Is something in need of attention? Only does it on a cold start at the start of the day.

[Rhyso]

Cold start

Mine used to do it throughout winter and my current car does the same.  Never happened during the summer

[braderz]

cool, long as its nothing thats gonna fail at the worst of times!! cheers bud

[Adam]

Mine does that. Well did this morning.

[Steve_PD]

mine does it every morning

[asif]

Yeah same here only on the first cold start of the day.
The colder it's getting the more smoke, goes pretty quick though.
I thought the car had something wrong with it.

[Agreeable Slick]

Generally all diesel motors have a cold start advance feature, that will a) allow the engine to start when it's been left overnight in the cold, and b) stop the car bellowing white smoke out constantly until it is warm.

This will continue to function until such time as the engine temp sensor reads it is up to temperature then it will click back into the normal timing pattern. Like has been mentioned, with nights getting colder again, this will be more noticable now.

HTH.

[asif]

Only thing weird I noticed today was that it puffed out the normal white smoke but was juddering like it was dropping revs but the rev needle was sitting still, bit weird I thought so I gave it a tiny bit of revs to like help it as it sounded like it was struggling.
Anyone have that along with there puff?

[Agreeable Slick]

What you have to remember is that diesels are basically heat engines, and require such to work. So on a cold morning, dumping a load of cold air into an already cold cylinder will not help it's combustion process.

This is why a diesel will appear a little more laggy than usual on cold mornings, especially if you miss-time the clutch when leaving a junction.