Are you sick of burning gas. Why does a quart of water flow out of my tailpipe after running the engine?

Posted by  in Thursday, January 29th 2009   
Topics: High Gas Mileage Used Cars    Tags: , ,
geiniusbobiknow asked:


Are they adding water to the gas somehow and it is passing through the engine, if its not making it to the converter, it must change to steam and be vented out unnoticed? are we really, really getting ripped off or is this local or what?

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9 Comments

Johnny said in February 2nd, 2009 at 7:47 am    

Sounds like condensation.

hermitofnorthdome said in February 2nd, 2009 at 6:49 pm    

the water is more than likely condensation. if there was that much water in the gas your car would either run very poorly or not run at all. when your car is running do you get a constant flow of white colored smoke (actually steam) out of the tailpipe if you do a head gasket is blown and engine coolant is coming out your tailpipe as steam

Earl O said in February 6th, 2009 at 12:19 am    

What you see coming out of the tailpipe is from condensation. Ford has a small hole in the bottom of the muffler to let the condensation run out.

Chunky Monkey said in February 8th, 2009 at 9:18 am    

it means your catalytic converter is working

dagubment said in February 11th, 2009 at 9:22 am    

Yea, what they said………

Daniel B said in February 12th, 2009 at 5:59 pm    

Actually this is normal. Water vapor is part of the exhaust. It’s more noticeable in cooler weather when you can see it coming out of the tailpipe as a vapor. The water you see “running” out of the pipe is this vapor which has condensed in the pipe and the flow of the exhaust pushes it out.

crash said in February 15th, 2009 at 6:48 pm    

when you combine the hydrogen in the fuel with the oxygen from the air (this is called combustion)it produces water (h2o)in the form of water vapor(steam) some of this cools enough in the exhaust system to condense into liquid water.
burning 1 pound of gasoline will produce roughly 1 pound of water but unless the air is cold enough to condense it when it comes out of the exaust pipe(as in winter) you wont see it.

Aussie Bloke said in February 16th, 2009 at 10:40 am    

It’s condensation. Damp air goes through the engine and comes back out as invisible steam, but condenses again inside the exhaust pipe, since it isn’t as hot as the engine. Also, the process of burning gasoline creates even more water. This water should stop visibly flowing after a bit of a drive once the whole exhaust pipe finally warms up – but in winter, it often never really warms up enough, so you’ll steam and drip all the time.

Don’t worry, if there was water in your fuel, the engine would not run. Water doesn’t mix with gasoline, and neither does it burn.

Good luck!

Leftdawg said in February 19th, 2009 at 9:02 am    

Probably cause you got a blown headgasket. And if you do you will stop worrying about the gas and worry about the repair shop bill.

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