Update: The engine threw a rod shortly after. An engine swap is in my future.

On my way to work, I pulled away from a traffic light and noticed I was down on power, looked out the rear and couldn't see anything behind me but thick grey smoke. The check engine light flashed for a bit as well. I let off on the gas and the smoke went away. Figured it might have been a fluke, reminded myself I needed to book it in to get the plugs changed, and kept going. Merged onto the highway and again, thick grey smoke and reduced power when I pushed the gas. No flashing CEL this time though. From there it got progressively worse to the point where I could only do about 30mph on the highway or it would just dump smoke like crazy. Even minor throttle would make it smoke. I barely managed to get it to my mechanic and they are taking a look today.

Am I going to need a new engine? Fingers crossed for a simple fix.

Plugs are original as far as I know, 94k miles.

 

Had a similar panic attack myself a few months ago. PCV valve. Hopefully yours is as simple. And cheap.

 

Sorry for the ignorant question but why does the crankcase need to vent into the intake plenum, gumming everything up? Can it be rerouted to vent to the atmosphere? Surely, the computers aren't looking for carbon saturated vapour to pass through the intake...

 

emissions

 

So, if I vent my pcv to atmosphere and plug the hole in my intake, there will be no noticeable difference except not gumming up the throttle body? Seems better than having to clean the varnish off the butterfly time after time.

 

Didn't say that it will probably sense something is off and set a cel or just self destruct

 

Same thing on mine!

 

Well this sucks. Originally they called back and had the same diagnosis: PCV valve. I was happy. Then I got another call back after they fixed that saying they noticed some noise on a test drive and it looks like a connecting rod has gone.

I'm in shock. Love this truck, but that probably means a new engine.

 

Connecting rod... and just making noise.

Maybe it's just really low on oil. Connector rod would cause some serious problems; misfires and check engine light. I hope this is not the case for you.

 

Well it was just making a tapping noise. Then it made a bigger noise and oil started pouring out of the back of the engine and it had to be towed back to the shop. They said the PCV issue likely caused it to run low on oil.

Is this plausible? I would have thought there was a low oil warning light, and also I check the oil level fairly frequently and it hadn't budged from normal.