White Smoke...Confused

[Ape Runner]

So last weekend I let my battery die (left my lights on for a couple hours) on accident. I had a guy in a big F350 hook up the jumper cables to give me a jump. Battery was really dead, it took about 15 minutes of trying and trickle charging before it would turn over. In my 10 attempts to start my car, the engine would get really close to turning over, and I was tapping the gas to try to get it to fire up, but with no luck.

The engine finally turned over, and idled a little rough for a few seconds and then was billowing white smoke for about 45 seconds, but idling fine. I first thought "head gasket, crap!", but it idled fine, and usually a head gasket issue makes the engine run rough. Then I thought "flooded engine from pumping the gas?" but it's fuel injected, so how could that be? I drove 5.5 hours home that evening, towing a trailer, and the car ran perfect.

Scanned it with my OBDII scanner and no codes, car runs normal, doesn't overheat, etc. Coolant level has not dropped either.

So what was it? What caused all that white smoke?

 

[3rd gen king]

So last weekend I let my battery die (left my lights on for a couple hours) on accident. I had a guy in a big F350 hook up the jumper cables to give me a jump. Battery was really dead, it took about 15 minutes of trying and trickle charging before it would turn over. In my 10 attempts to start my car, the engine would get really close to turning over, and I was tapping the gas to try to get it to fire up, but with no luck.

The engine finally turned over, and idled a little rough for a few seconds and then was billowing white smoke for about 45 seconds, but idling fine. I first thought "head gasket, crap!", but it idled fine, and usually a head gasket issue makes the engine run rough. Then I thought "flooded engine from pumping the gas?" but it's fuel injected, so how could that be? I drove 5.5 hours home that evening, towing a trailer, and the car ran perfect.

im no expert but ill have to go with the power loss to the comp and something along the lines of everything resetting and adjusting again?

 

[Baja Runner]

Sounds to me that the engine was flooded, and that smoke was caused by the gas.

 

[IanB]

Smoke monster. Don't mess with it.

 

[T4R_Finally]

Have to agree on the flooding. Before our 3rd gen, we had a mazda with a rotary engine and they are notorious for flooding and being difficult to restart, as we found out first hand a few times. Always took a long time and eventually a jump to get it started and it would run rough as hell and billow white smoke when it finally fired up. It would smooth out and the smoke would go away after a couple of minutes. It usually would throw a cel for cylinder misfire or lean condition in the process though.