458 Smoke on Cold Start

That does NOT sound like water vapor. It sounds like the oil is overfilled (but then again, you say it hasn't happened since?)

Oil overfill will definitely create a smoke bomb effect, and generally speaking is not good for the intake/MAFs

 

The overfill of oil is a possible cause. This happened to me on my turbo 911. I blew smoke for a week or so.

y 2010 458 does not do this and the car sits for many months before I get around to driving it again.

Another possibility is you are leaking oil into your combustion chamber. When you start the car it smokes for awhile. This is what I suspect is happening to you. This should not hurt the car only a little annoying. This is most likely caused by a bad head gasket.

Did you mention the year and mileage of the car?

best

Lee

 

I am not sure if I am secretly being blackballed/ignored. Fine by me as I believe I accurately told you what has occurred.
There is a relatively common miscue by the ECU that will put too much oil into combustion chamber leading to XS smoking. My garage was so filled that you could not see walls as described above. Ergo why my wife wanted to call the fire department as she was unaware of my car having been the culprit.
I cannot understand all this talk of water vapor.
Best

 

Randy did your smoke smell bad? If it did my guess it is probably oil related.

best

 

Yup.
I was not worried as 15 years of Ferrari experience has kept me from getting concerned when "unusual" things occur the first time.
My uber tech explained the glitch which can cause it and told me to forget about it. No cracked heads or ring issues. Just a known periodic occurrence that happens for no rhyme or reason.
Not unlike my buddy's F12 anomaly. His infotainment system is completely turned off at master control. Yet on start up his radio periodically comes on! No error code can be found. Likely because there is some erroneous factory code that is being perceived as normal!!
Anyway, you get the idea.
Net: Giant smoke = oil.
Best

 

Ha, gotta love our pesky Italians!

 

Over time the valves seal in the head dry up and oil falls in to the combustion chamber.
To avoid the drying of seals turn the car on once a week.

 

Same issues this Morning!My complete Garage was Full of grey smoke.First Time After 6years.2 weeks ago i started my car only for 1 minutes 3 times to repair the light in the Garage.is this the Problem,that the car was Not warm up?

 

Interesting to see this after experiencing a major smoking incident. I hadn't driven my car in over a month, had the car on a tender the entire time. Tried starting, and the starter ran for a split second and then the dash lights went off. Seemed like the car battery died. Let up on the start button, and the engine started! Every alarm imaginable came on, and my garage filled up with a wall of smoke. The dash had every warning imaginable, and I couldn't pull the car out of the garage because the parking brake alarm was also on, and it wouldn't release. I shut the engine off,let it sit for 10 seconds and then restarted. All alarms were off, I was able to drive the car OUT of my smoke filled garage,. I really suspect my now eight year old battery has died, and will replace it. The car started and ran normally the rest of the day. I've been pretty consistent on keeping the maintainer plugged in. A 2013 with the original battery is probably about as much as a person can expect these days. Certainly this is the worse incident of a car smoking on start up in my 66 years!

 

This has happened before when I left my 458 sitting for around 4 weeks. It was on a trickle charger for the whole time but there was a miss fire of some sort upon the first startup. On the second it started just fine; but like your case there was a fair amount of smoke from the exhaust. Mainly from the middle one. I thought of it as no big deal shouldn’t do you any harm.


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I dont understand why people leave this car in their garage for weeks without driving. I drive at least every other day. It's so hard to look at it and not drive it. Put 6000 miles in 9 months zero problems. I feel like the more u drive the 458 the better it drives. I was out of town for 5 days last week and the car was on trickle. Started up Monday and had the misfire like incident. Turned off and on without issue again. Solution is drive it as much as possible and enjoy the experience.


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2011 with 27K, heavy OIL smoke on start up randomly if not driven frequently. Will fill my garage in seconds. I change my own oil (40+years as professional auto mechanic, I own 3 cars w/dry sump), not over filled. Florida resident, temp this year never below 35 F. This seems more likely to happen if the starter struggles slightly to start. I emphasize this is random, I have owned the car two years and it has happened 3 times. I do not drive or start the car regularly and before anyone feels compelled to heckle me for this please understand I drive 5 cars and 2 motorcycles. The F car is the most engaging experience by far, if God would grant me another 60 years I would drive the 458 more......the solution is clearly stated above, drive and enjoy!

 

Thanks god for this forum ! I fired up my recently purchased Speciale yesterday after I left her sitting for 10 days since I was away. It went into white smoke bomb mode instantly, mostly from the right pipe. No warning lights or whatever else. In a instant, my front porch looked like Special Ops would crash in anytime soon, and the smoke made its way into the house through the kitchen door, from which my wife came out screaming while I was attempting to snap a video for later analysis

Switched off the engine, took my phone and typed "Smoke + cold start + ferrarichat" and felt better after 30 seconds of reading this thread.
Restarted the car, no smoke this time, went for a test drive, all good. Need to make sure to take her out once a week at least.

I'm glad I'm not the first experiencing that and thanks for sharing

 

I spoke to a Ferrari service writer, and tech regarding this. They said that the 458's do this every now and then. Probably once every 1,000 starts +/-.
It's completely random. The way the mechanic explained it, was that if the #6 piston winds up in a very specific spot when last shut down, oil is allowed to drain into the cylinder. That tiny bit of oil, on the next start up creates those plumes of smoke. He did happen to say that sometimes it is very bad where it has actually hydro locked engines trying to start! He said that they had to pull the spark plug out, and crank it, causing oil to shoot out like a geyser!
So basically he said, it's not normal, but normal in the sense that it will happen to all cars eventually.

 

Had this happen this morning. It happens to have been a couple weeks since last drive and despite being on the ctek tender the whole time it was a little slow to crank and I released the start button too soon. On restart I got the electrical fail take car to dealer error and I’ve ignored that before with a low battery but this time there was a huge cloud of smoke. Killed it and on third start and a few after it’s been perfectly normal and running just fine. I suspect the ctek tender just doesn’t work or maybe the connector is bad. I need to try using a normal tender directly on the battery for a couple days and see if I get more reliable charging.

 

I had it happen with the same symptoms as well. Plugged in Ctek, slow crank, smoke but this time a bit less Smokey. Still enough to make sure people know you’re driving a Ferrari. It’s not affecting the car which I have maintained regularly by the GZ dealership so I wouldn’t worry about it… it’s a Ferrari and the solution to avoid that is to drive it as much as you can

 

Add my smoky start to the list. This happened 1 week ago. Turned the key, and nothing happens for a second or two then I get an electrical failure warning, the motor starts right up and the plumber who was walking up the driveway thought the car was on fire. Lots of white smoke, definitely not water vapor. When I could see past the smoke the engine went back to its normal purring self. I took it for an hour drive the next day and all was well.
It sits on a tender all the time.
Like everyone else I was very worried until I found this thread. Glad to see I’m in good company…


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Like others, I just found this thread after freaking out about a huge belch of smoke for the first time on my 2012 458S. The explanation of the squirt of oil at prior startup not having a chance to burn off fits my situation well. I hadn't started the car in 10 days which is routine and not previously a problem. However, the last time I started it was only to move it from one garage space to another, so it was running for maybe 1 minute. I think that super-short running time had more to do with causing the smoke than how long sine last driven. I'm relieved now, thank you Fchat.