How can I tell if exhaust smoke is due to the carburetors or if it’s rings or something else?

 

 

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They smell different.  Burning oil smells like burnt oil, too much fuel from the carbs smells like raw gasoline.  Seems obvious, of course, but you have to have that in mind and take a sniff.

And, if your oil level drops but you don't have leaks, that's a sign.

 

The inside of the tailpipe would be all sooty if it's fuel related. Like spark plugs, check those too they will tell a lot.

Smoke from unburnt fuel tends to be black, but from burning oil it tends to be blue. The sniff test is good.

Mines is a smoker in the morning, seems like theres lots of water/condensation buildup in the exhaust. Once it warms up its fine, the water level never seems to drop. In the Bay Area everything has been wet lately, so I feel like its just the moisture in the air that is causing this, i saw a idling Land Cruiser that was also letting a considerable amount of smoke in the air.

Here is what it was doing on Thursday, it did this until I went for a drive around, then stopped.

Before I tuned my carbs down really well I had gray/black smoke on idle, and my buddy said when I took off it also let out a lot of smoke (black). Turned out to be the needles all along.

 

You might be able to find out more information through a leakdown test. OCT makes a good tool for this.