Couple of Questions...

[bimmer135i]

I had a couple of questions about my car and was hopping you guys could help.

1. The other day, I was getting out of the car while it was turned on. I noticed that there was some white smoke coming out of the exhaust. I did a google search and found out that it could be coolant leaking, oil leaking, or a blown head gasket. I don't know much about cars, considering this is my first car, so I was hoping you guys could help me out. My question is what could it be? I got my oil change less than a 1,000 miles ago if that helps.

2. Also, I have a friend with a 2010 328i automatic. When driving the car, the car doesn't seem to shift properly. It's really odd, as if the car doesn't want to shift. An example would be, your flooring the car in 1st, the car's rpm will just rev there for a bit, followed by a big jerk, and then the car will shift into 2nd. I've never seen it in any other vehicle before. I thought it was a software problem but was wondering if anyone else had the same problem.

3. I was interested in doing some mods to my car. I was wondering what you guess would think would be a good first mod to my car, performance wise. I don't want to much attention when driving so a exhaust or intake isn't really an option. I was thinking off getting an M3 sway bar, but I wanted to weigh my other options.

Thanks in advance guys! Hope your having fun with your cars!

[Focusedintntions]

#1 could be a whole myriad of possible issues, but my guess with limited info here, is if it was one of the first cooler days you've had in a while and the car was just starting up and hadn't warmed the engine up, what you saw was just water vapor in the air. Common on all cars in colder weather when they first start up. Now if you are losing oil and have an issue of adding oil pretty frequently you have something more serious and it'd be better to take it to the dealer.

#2 you can try doing an ecu reset and see if that helps, if not, then take it to the dealer and let them diagnose, or better yet go test drive a used 328 and try comparing it. Hard to really say what's wrong based on your description.

#3 There are sooooo many threads about this down the in performance section. Try a search of the forums and you'll find more information you can shake the proverbial stick at. What mod to do really depends on what you want, faster straight line speed, flatter cornering, better stopping, better acceleration. Decide what you want to accomplishing with your mod and go from there. But in reality an intake isn't a huge attention drawer. I would say 99% of people out there wouldn't be able to tell you have one unless you drive around w/o a hood on. Best "stealth" mod for you though would def be a tune though.

[JimD]

All cars will have a little "smoke", visible exhaust, especially at startup. Moisture is generated by the combustion process and collects in the exhaust system until it warms up. A car with a coolant leak into the combustion chamber generates large volumes of white "smoke" and it increases when you open the throttle. You need somebody to watch you accelerate. If there is no problem, there should be very little to no "smoke". If the smoke increases noticably and does not go away when the engine is warmed up, you need to take it to the dealer.

With respect to the automatic shifting I would ask the dealer to drive it and say if all is well. I test drove some 128 automatics because that was all they had. I didn't like the lag before it would "go" but otherwise did not notice anything unusual. It's hard to say if there is a problem without a test drive.

Jim