Expert: Brad Sears - 10/21/2011

Question
My daughter has a 1962 Rambler Classic 6, with an automatic transmission. Recently she had it worked on: generator, water pump, fuel tank unplugged, tuned, etc. About two days after she picked it up, it started smoking (white smoke) and seems to be discharging a lot of water, even after running for some time. It also started leaking automatic transmission fluid.
I looked at it and it had one very loose spark plug, which I fixed. Could that have caused a problem?
The smoke does not smell like antifreeze, but does have a petroleum smell. I thought it might be sucking transmission fluid into the engine, so I removed the vacuum line from the intake manifold and plugged the hole, assuming that is the line to the vacuum modulator. It still smoked.
I plan on disconnecting the fuel tank and running fresh gas through he carburetor, since the mechanics may have not cleaned out the old fuel. If that doesn't work, any ideas?

Answer
The fact that a spark plug was loose after all that work kind of sends a red flag up the flag pole, if you catch my drift. Well lets start with the smoke. Remember that smoke caused by oil burning or a rich mixture will drift away but still be visible. Steam like from a blown head gasket will condense in a short space and disappear. When you talk about water i presume that you mean out of the tail pipe. Now if the vacuum modulator on the transmission was ruptured and causing transmission fluid to be drawn into the engine, it will take a bit of time for the smoke to stop if you disconnect the vacuum line because of the amount of transmission fluid ingested. Let me know if the smoke/vapor out of the tail pipe is smoke or steam and we will go from there.