1987 124 suddenly misses on Interstate?

I have a 300E that out of the blue will begin to run rough, misses, and backfires and losses power. This happened to me this morning at 70mph finally pulled off the road because my speed kept dropping down. The engine stalled out attempted to restart nothing. Noted white smoke coming out of my tailpipe. After about three minutes started up, huge cloud of whitish smoke appeared, ran rough for a few 30 seconds and then it was OK again except for a couple of burps at high speed. Does anyone have any idea what could cause this? Electrical, fuel, other?

[CloudNine]

Clouds of white smoke can indicate one of two things:

1. Coolant leak from head gasket into a cylinder; or

2. a new pope has been elected.

Guessing 1, above, I recommend towing the car to someone qualified to do a leak-down test on the cooling system. That should give the answer.

If you have led a good, clean life the problem should not be too expensive to resolve, guessing about $500 for replacement of head gasket. If you haven't, you may have a warped head, scored cylinders or worse.

One other indicator might be the presence of a milky white substance in the oil. Check your dipstick. Absence of same is not conclusive.

Good luck!

Tom

[J.HIDALGO]

then, by process of elimination, we have a new pope!!!