I really needhelp,im not sure if my head gasket has gone or somethng else, i was driving on the motorway when a lot of smoke came from my engine and it was makin horrible noises like major misfiring and performance had gone to a crawl. also i may have left water cap off as only just filled it up before i left and was not on when i checked after smoke cleared, but thought this may have blown off with pressure or something. When i try to start it now it takes a long time and when itdoes start ittries cutting out and misfires badly.car is a 1997 mercedes c230 kompressor 2.3L. Please help need my car back on road its been months now and dont want to waste money fixing something that isn't the problem.

Thanks, Batmamerc.

 

Smoke or Steam? From where? Tailpipe or Underhood?

Did the engine overheat? Temperature gauge reading normal?

Check Engine light (CEL or MIL) illuminated?

Engine oil level. Correct or over full at time?

Speed when problem occurred? Need more detail to make any sensible suggestion.

Could be simply too much oil in the engine or you could have completely cooked the engine and damage COULD BE extensive.

The water filler cap would not "blow off" under pressure I can assure you. Running without the cap is not recommended but under normal conditions should not prove too much of a problem unless the water temp begins to rise due to loss of coolant since coolant can escape as steam from the missing cap.

Stuart

 

think it was smoke not steam coming from tailpipe but steam from under bonnet. i didn't notice engine temp to start wit dint think to look but when i tried restarting engine it did rise very fast. all of the engine warning lights were on at the time oil, engine management, etc. i think oil at time was ok as was fine a few days before. was doing around 70mph. also before this happened the first time it was started after a few hours of been off it ran on 3 instead of 4 untill iturned itoff and on again n it was fine but bit sluggish for few minutes. it has done 170000 also so quite a lot of miles.

 

It sounds like you left the cap off. it is ABSOLUTLY CRUCIAL that you have a cap on the reservoir, your engine will boil over without it. Pull your top cover off of engine (the red cover), and look and see if the coolant leaked down aroung the spark plug boots. that will cause a misfire. You may want to have a shop do a compression check on your engine just to be safe.