My 04 just started making smoke. It's not chipped (never chipped) and for the last 5 years is mostly getting short (very short) runs of a few miles a few days a week.

I've got 160,000 on it and the other day needed to floor it to get into traffic and it let out a cloud of black smoke then ran fine. Playing a bit, I get black smoke once if I hit it and after that get nothing or maybe a puff of white/blue.

I've priced new trucks and decided this one is getting paint and whatever it needs to run 5 more years (or more). Any thoughts on what this kind of smoke means? Aside from paint my other issues are minor but the smoking seems it could mean $$'s so...

 

So I also googled this and the first answer seemed too easy, but easy enough to check. Black smoke, not enough air, air filter too dirty.
I happened to have an air filter in the shop and it was about due... New filter, now no smoke (at least on one try). Could it really be that simple or is it fooling me?

 

Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest solution is most likely the right one......Ben

 

With my vehicles it seems like the most expensive solution is always the one... But yep - this made perfect sense and was silly easy.

 

Today I noticed that I'm still blowing a (big) puff on black smoke on only moderate acceleration, when cold. I've got 165K on this now and intend to keep it a while. Do I just ignore the smoke? It runs smooth and I'm not pulling heavy much so power is not an issue. I got the advice to just pro-actively replace the injectors. Is there a down side to deferring that?

 

...and just like it "stopped" before, it has stopped again.

Can anyone offer a theory of how this is failing? Can injectors get "sticky" in some way causing the over fueling or can a sensor be failing causing a bad fuel/air mix?

My sense here is to wait for it to get worse before spending money on the assumption this does not lead to anything more expensive by deferring maintenance?