Hello, I just bought an '01 Maxima and love the car, my question is I noticed a little blue/white smoke the other day when my 15 year old daughter started it, but haven't seen any since and I've started the car over 50 times since.....Could I be in for trouble with this or is this normal...The car has 70,000 miles on it.

how is the coolant level, and the oil level?

seem ok....we haven't put 2000 miles on it yet...........I've started it in the garage a few times without seeing smoke but has a high fume smell. Does that mean anything ?

hm,mm...70,000 miles...prior to buying it, was it certified pre-owned or anything?

If the smoke is only at start up it is fairly normal. most likely is it just alittle of left over gas in the in cylinders. I am only saying this becasue the smoke is blue. dark smoke is burning oil, and white smoke is coolant. It sounds like you have nothing to worry about. if the car starts to smoke once it has been running, or when you driveing then you could have a problem.

Blue smoke means you may be burning oil. White means coolant, black means you may be running rich or have a fuel issue.

............when my 15 year old daughter started it
15 and geting rerady to drive huh......i'm old :(

I have a 1999 SE with 86K miles on it. I was coming back from ATL today, and when I got home (100Mi Later), I went out a little while later and I kicked out a serious James Bond smokescreen! I was cruising pretty hard on the freeway, so I am hoping that it's a coolant issue. I was wondering if any of you finally resolved your White Smoke issue. I plan to get my radiator flushed tomorrow morning, so maybe that'll take care of it.

I may have a solution...My smoke issues ended as soon as I replaced my PCV Valve... It's an $8 investment, with a 10 minute install.

It worked for me...so at least pull yours and see how clogged up it is...

Good Luck

Or you could have bad valve seals. How mad does it smoke? So it smoke just from sitting for a while?

ORIGINAL: HarborNissanFL

Or you could have bad valve seals. How mad does it smoke? So it smoke just from sitting for a while?


Nissan has (as far as I have seen) springs around valve stem seals keeping them tight =super qualtiy. Thus Nissan engines need lots miles to wear down, not like GM oilers which start to puff oil from factory floor...
--->Opel 1.2L hanbook says half gallon burned oil for 1kmiles is ok for new Opel. Hello? 200kmiles driven Nissan goes 10k w/o adding one drop.

The PCV valve blockage is typically oil schmuck dependent, very cheap to clean/replace or to bypass alltogether. Known to become blocked in lo mileage engines.