ok, I attended my first autoX today (well, autoX coaching type class, but close enough, the Escort got put through its paces through some cones) and on my third run through a half-course (roughly a 20-30 second affair, as the full course was 40 seconds or so for the slower drivers), as I was powering out of a right-left-right slalom onto the finish straight, my car produced a plume of smoke that rivaled a blown Formula 1 engine, but ran perfectly fine. I checked the oil level, and it was about an inch above the hatch marks on the dipstick, indicating a drastically over-filled system. the rest of the day, same story, it would smoke when I got on the gas hard, and a little bit when I was just babying the car to get to the auto-parts store. well, I got there, got a full oil change done, drove it home, and no smoke as far as I could tell. I checked the antifreeze level as per the suggestion of a family friend, and while the level was ok, the antifreeze was quite literally the same basic color as root beer, just without the fizz. in talking with the family friend, he suggested that it could be a less-toxic antifreeze (propylene glycol I think he said it was) that was red to begin with, but the owners manual calls for either normal green antifreeze, or yellow antifreeze (although that I have never run across before). like I said, with the engine still a bit hot, the antifreeze level was between the full hot and full cold marks on the overflow tank, and after an oil change it did not smoke. also, at no point in the day did my engine temperature gauge indicate an overheating engine, it always stayed right in the center of hot and cold. this is on a 2002 Ford Escort ZX-2 with the 2.0L DOHC Zetec engine and an automatic trans, and it is quite literally as stock as stock can get, apart from GRM license plate frames, a GRM sticker on the rear bumper, and a parking pass sticker for my high school. hell, still rolling on the tires it left the factory with, even. the only ill effect I eventually noticed was it was starting to feel a very little bit down on power, but I'm putting that down to oil fouling the plugs which should burn off now that I've got the proper amount of oil in the engine.
is it likely that I blew a head gasket? being that this is my daily driver, I don't want to risk blowing up a very low-mileage engine if I do have a blown head gasket. anyone have any input?
