ok i started her up today, and the idle was really wierd. not really bad, just weird. sound was a little off, and thinks were shaking a bit. give it a little gas and everything is magnified till about 2000 rpm and then it smooths out. took it for a drive, from idle to 2000 rpm really boggy and poor, then it starts to take off but my power is way down. no tourqe at all. havin a hard time gettin it up to 55. changed the plugs and wires less than 500 miles ago, just changed the oil and filter on wensday. seems like im not runnin on all cylinders. oh ya, it blows a little bit of white smoke. it always has a little when it was cold but now it still does even when warm. not alot, just enough to fog things up while its parked for a minute. any ideas as to what to check?

any check engine light ?

My Sportage did something similar, but it was a LOT of white smoke. Turned out to be a bad fuel injector that was allowing too much fuel to squirt into the engine, it couldn't burn it all and thus the white smoke. I could rev the engine higher and it would run better because at higher

revs it was better able to use the extra gas.

You might check the injectors, I'm not sure how you would do that though on the Sporty. What I did was removed all my injectors, had them professionally cleaned (the guy used some special ultrasonic injector cleaner machine) and refurbished to supposedly like-new condition, after I put them back in the problem was gone and it ran smoother than I ever could remember.

just an idea

Another idea off the top of my head, you could have a blown head gasket or cracked block or head, causing water to enter the cylinder thus the smoke.

Maybe try this, remove the radiator cap and start her up, let the engine warm up enough that the thermostat opens up so your water pump is circulating water, and watch for bubbles in the radiator fluid. Often times a blown head gasket or cracked block will cause exhaust gas to push its way into the water jacket and then you see little bubbles coming up from in the radiator. I saw this on my friend's Geo that had a cracked block, it was funny <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/drunk.gif" alt="" /> but he kept driving it that way for a long time lol...

Another thing, I guess it could be oil, but usually oil smoke looks blue or black, but it can be hard to tell. This one is the easiest of all, you just check your oil regularly and see if it is disappearing... That is, unless you ALSO have an oil leak, then it can be hard to tell which place the oil is going <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" />

Last but not least, you could also try to check that every cylinder is getting spark, if one cylinder is not getting spark then the fuel would not ignite, and might cause white smoke as the unburned fuel exits the exhaust. Unfortunately it's harder on the sportage to tell if you are getting spark or not, on most cars you would just hook each spark plug wire to a tester or an extra spark plug (touching the block to ground it) and verify that you see a spark. On the Sportage I don't know how you would check this since the spark plugs have those funky coil-on-plug setups. You could have a cylinder not getting spark due to a bad wire, or arcing, or heck you could have a bad COIL which would make 2 cylinders not get spark! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />

So yeah, good luck with that, sucks to be you right now <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

i went out and started it again to show my dad, and its runnin fine. no problems what so ever. drove it to church, let it sit a few hours, still runnin great. nothing changed. maybe i just have a dirty connector somewhere? ill have to keep an eye on it for the next few days, see if it happens again. maybe its just a freak happening.

Probably going to church helped too!!! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

It will be back.
Mine has been doing the same.... but no smoke at all.


I thought it was water or trash in the tank. Treated for water, it went away and returned fast. Then it progressed and started throwing CEL. I treated it with Seafoam, it went away but was back before long. So then I broke down and tore it apart when I finally had time and changed the plugs. Boy they really needed it (I hope you used anti-sieze). Problem went immediately totally away period. Now a few weeks later it is starting back again... go figure...

That's what I came on here for... time to go start my own thread.
<img src="/forums/images/graemlins/barf.gif" alt="" />

it happened again this morning. turned it off, started it again and it was runnin fine? when it was running badly it smelled like it was running way rich. the CEL is on, but has been since i bought it. never had any problems so i never thought to get it looked at. in my expierence they have rarely meant anything. i will try to take it to get read today. how much does a code reader usually run? i may just buy one. is there a certain format it needs to be in? i dont know anything about computers

If you have an Autozone near you they will read the codes for free. All you have to do is stop in and ask them. Otherwise a repair shop can do it, they will usually charge you though.

nearest autozone is about 3 hours away. one big downfall of small town living, very limited selection on shops and stores. i dont even know if anyone has a code reader here. cant imagine they wouldnt but who knows....getting parts for the sport is a nightmare, its the only one for a hundred miles, wich is one of the many reasons i like it. anyway, ill let you know what i find out

You could probably order one through Harbor Freight or JEG's, they have some relatively inexpensive ones that will read the code and reset the CEL light.
This one looks pretty decent:

JEG's code reader