Smoke from engine compartment. Please help.

[ChristophCobb]

Just bought a 92 SVX with 77k miles on it. Not taken care of. Dirty. Used regular gas. Gunk In the pan under the engine. Dirt and leaves all over the trunk and vents under the wind shield. So far I've done a very basic cleaning. Vacuumed all the leaves I could reach with the nozzle. Still more in there. Vacuumed the interior. Put fresh full synthetic oil in her, fresh K and N oil filter, and Lucas oil injector cleaner in the tank as well as a full 93 octane fill up. Car runs better than when I bought it, but it doesn't like to stop at red lights. It goes down and gives low revs like it's going to stall then corrects itself. Like: vrum..vrum.. vrum.. vrum.. Almost like when an engine runs out of fuel. Then sometimes it's fine and doesn't do it. But more noticeably is the smoke coming from the engine compartment. Smells like oil and chemical. It's really got me worried. It continues to smoke after the cars off which leads me to believe something's leaking onto something hot and then evaporating. I don't know. Where do I start looking? What do I do? Yesterday after I drained the garbage oil from the engine and put new stuff in and did the filter, when I was driving it, the check engine light came on. I pulled over. This was when I first noticed the low rev thing. I shut the car off. Checked for oil leaking on the street under the car. Nothing. Turned it back on and it ran perfectly. Ran well for the rest of the day, even at stop lights. This morning there was an accident on the way to work up the road so needless to say there was a lot of stop and go and I noticed the smoke and the low revs again. Any ideas?

[bishop]

When I picked up my car the power steering dumped a bunch of fluid onto the exhaust, luckily no fire, though it still smokes a little to this day. As for the almost dieing it sounds like theres a vacuum leak some where.

[Crazy_pilot]

Yep, check underneath for power steering fluid leaking onto the exhaust. My car is doing that quite badly right now so I made a little aluminium drip shield. I don't recommend that as a permanent fix though.

[ChristophCobb]

Good point! I was under it yesterday and noticed a ton a black sludge in the pan and on various parts under there and assumed it was bad oil but that makes sense! Okay so check power steering. As for the possible vacuum leak, how problematic is that to fix? Also what kind of power steering fluid does the 92 svx need? I'm not sure how I'm going to get that repaired or how much it's gonna cost.

[Blacky]

Power steering uses transmission fluid.

[ChristophCobb]

Okay. I actually don't know what type of tranny fluid to get for this car either. I'm sure it's in the owners manual tho. I just started driving it a couple days ago so I'm still discovering it's quirks.