Car cranks but will not start, EPC on and white smoke

HUZYM

MEMBER
2013 SEAT LEON
1.8L
4 CYL
TURBO
2WD
AUTOMATIC
50,000 MILES

Seat Leon FR 2013 1.8 Petrol

So I was driving along a straight road doing about 60 until I reached a traffic light, I noticed the smell of petrol but didn’t think anything of it until the EPC and check engine light came on, after that the car shut off and wouldn’t start again although it does crank. I called the RAC out and after running diagnostics he said it could be the head gasket, cylinder 2 was also misfiring and there is a lot of white smoke coming out the exhaust. He did what he called a sniff test but the color didn’t seem to change much, a compression test was also done over cylinder 1 and 2 which gave readings of around 70 each. He couldn’t do 3 and 4 because of an issue with the bolts. Can anyone help? Happy to answer questions! P.S, yes I did put the right fuel into the car.

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

Unfortunately your compression check with 70 PSI is the issue. This is most likely due to a head gasket because of the white smoke. Even though the fluid did not change for the head gasket test doesn't mean it is not the issue.

the way to know for sure what the issue is with the compression is to do a cylinder leakage test. Here are some guides that will help with this issue. You may be past some of this info but it will help others that visit this page.

https://youtu.be/dCjmRL3p4Cs

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/how-to-test-engine-compression

Here is another guide that will help with a head gasket test:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/head-gasket-blown-test

Lastly we need to follow this video on how to perform a leakage test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHli-wLy9_o

This will basically tell us for sure where we are losing this compression.

Let me know if you have questions with this. Thanks