Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting '96 2.0 4-cyl

Hello all, I have a '96 Ford Contour, 2.0 4-cyl. It has started smoking real bad from the exhaust (kinda white/light blue) and is running rough. As best I can tell the oil looks fine and coolant isn't disappearing from the resevoir. The only odd thing I have found is when I pulled the spark plugs, one of them was coated with gas, the others looked normal. Would a bad spark plug or wire cause the car to smoke badly??? Thanks guys/gals.

white usually = bad head gasket
blue usually = burning oil

The reason for the blue is because oil is getting past the valves ( corrent me if I'm wrong think valves) and mixes with the gas.

a bad plug/coil/wire can cause a little smoke, but the pcm will see the misfire condition and kill the fuel pulse to that cylinder to protect the catalyst. Try to correct your misfire and see how bad it smokes then...