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Dropped $900 on a smoke machine and it just sat there judging me for a month
Six weeks back a guy on YouTube swore a smoke machine would find every vacuum leak in ten minutes, so I grabbed one for $900 from the tool truck, thinking it would pay for itself on the next three diag jobs. First car I tried it on, a 2011 Civic with a rough idle, I pumped smoke into the intake and watched it curl out of the throttle body gasket nice and pretty. Great, I thought. Then I did a Ranger with a P0171 and the smoke just vanished somewhere behind the block and I never did find the leak, so I ended up doing the old carb cleaner trick anyway. The machine itself works fine, that is not the issue. The issue is I bought it thinking it would replace careful listening and a vacuum gauge, and it did not. I have used it maybe four times in two months and it has saved me one intake gasket job. Anybody here actually get real mileage out of theirs, or did you buy one and stick it on the shelf next to the compression tester you never touch?
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paige_craig16d ago
Mine's been sitting next to the compression tester so long they're basically roommates now. One thing that helped was getting a cheap shop vac and blowing air instead of smoke on the hard ones, makes the leak hiss loud enough to hear. Idk, maybe it's just me but the smoke only shines when the leak is out in the open, the hidden ones still laugh at you. At least the Civic gasket paid for part of it, that's more than my timing light ever did.
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