[Spits] Smoke? in the exhaust

[Roger Elliott]

Hi Everyone,

I did some head work on my 80 Spitfire recently.  Everything seemed to be fine for about 200 miles.  Then I decided to adjust the timing a little - it had been set at about 0 TDC.  I moved it to about 8BTDC.  When I took it for a drive, it overheated some. Then I saw did some checking.  There was some antifreeze in the number 4 cylinder.  Ok there was a lot of antifreeze in the cylinder, some may have gone it the evaporative canister.

So I took the head off and there appeared to be a small split in the head gasket by the #4 cylinder.  I think that the rings in the gasket that are supposed to seat in around the cylinder may not have been in the grooves.  I bought a new head gasket (FelPro this time) and looked over both the block and the head.  Both seemed fine.

Then I put everything back together.  Now there is smoke coming out of the exhaust.  It appears to be white.  

I just checked the compression - the cylinders checked out at 182 190 190 190 and seems to be running fine.

So finally my question, could the smoke be from water that got into the exhaust system or being pulled out of the canister?  I hope I hope!

Or am I in big trouble?  What else should I look at?

Thanks,
Roger Elliott