Pretty much forget the head or head gasket for now.

Sweet smell as you know is usually anti freeze. Yet you are not loosing any.


Make sure the valve pan vent hose is clear. Also you state the car has to sit for a minute or so before a restart. Try taking the oil filter cap off as soon as it quits and see if it restarts.

Some anti freeze getting into a cylinder while driving is not going to shut down an engine I suspect.

One other thing is perhaps a faulty operating egr valve might do this. It opens as soon as the conditions that allow it to occur. Then if it does not close when it should. Until you let the car cool down a little. The combustion gases it lets in stop the fuel from burning and you get the white clouds of unburnt fuel and quitting engine.


Part of your description does not fit a head gasket or cracked head issue I feel. Or just not what would be my first suspicion. Also if your coolant level is not dropping I would do a rethink. A leakage as heavy as you describe would probably blow the coolant out of the rad with the cap off.


Remember never to remove a rad cap on a warmed up engine without taking precautions. You could probably leave yours off or loose during a test.


Engine will not idle after getting to operational temperatures. Plus the white smoke.The egr valve operation is the big suspect to me. Just pull the vacuum line and stick a golf tee or small bolt in the line as a test. I can be wrong but this is still the first place I would go.


I have to add as another poster mentioned that it could be a lot of water in the fuel as well. Although I still would first do the egr test. Primarily it is just faster than all the work to find and deal with water as well. It is also unlikely the water in the fuel issue would have any dependence or at least less on the engines operational temperature.