Oh no! Brown smoke!

[JonSeigel]

After I engaged in some "spirited" driving with a friend of mine who has an M3, he told me that at one point as I downshifted at high revs (still not at the limit when downshift completed), my car emitted a large cloud of white smoke with a *brown* edge (not gray or black; I asked him this several times). It happened only once during the hour long ride (He was behind me only about half the time. So he saw this happen once in a 1/2 hour behind me). I am in panic mode. Should I be?

Details: Car is a 93 C2 (with head gaskets, for those of you uninitiated with the 964), just under 90k, no real problems, car has been well taken care of. BTW, this isn't a typical 964 problem, so I wanted to throw this out to the general 911 community. What's your honest evaluation? Thanks.

[Schrup]

Sounds like a cloud of carbon to me. Perhaps you should drive it in a spirited manner more often. I see this often on runs when I'm on the ass of somebodies garage queen & they try to get away from me.

[azasadny]

I agree with Paul as I've seen the same thing. Long periods of time without taking the car up to full rev/heat can cause this phenomenon. I wouldn't worry about it, just drive it like that (spirited) more often!!