Smoke only on start up and sometimes sluggish during acceleration
 

I am new to mazdas. I drove a mx3 about 8 months ago and instantly fell in love (that was only with the 1.6L). I just bought a 1993 mx3 GS with the 24V 2.5L with a performance mazda chip in it. The previous owner said he done the swap himself and done a budget rebuild, only replacing what was needed and necessary for a rebuild. It has a new distributor on it, but the previous owner said that there is a bad seal and oil is getting into the distributor. It puts out white smoke only on start up and then goes away about a minute after running. Also, during acceleration, it gets sluggish if I give it to much gas. The previous owner said that the oil in the distributor was causing it. I'm not sure if he knows what he is talking about, so im asking you guys for your advise on the isssue.I also have what looks like oil in my upper intake manifold. Any suggestions?

Btw, the engine only has about 500 miles on it after the rebuild and hasn't ran on anything lower than 91 octane fuel

I recently got a 96 mx6 4 cyl. I was having the same issues with white smoke start ups and missing during acceleration. When starting up the tune-up process, I noticed the coil wire was not completely connected. I cleaned the coil connection. I replaced all the plugs, wires and the distributor cap and rotor. The car no longer has the white smoke and I do not have any missing or sputtering. Hope this helps a little.

Is it liquid oil in the manifold or just a coating? Does the white smoke linger in the air or does it disappear? Any odd smells from the exhaust? I owned a Saab 900IIS (ugh never do that again) that had a leaky distributor seal and after some time it would miss at higher RPMs which went away when I cleaned out the distributor cap only to return about 2 weeks later, only fix for this is to change the seal.

Have you checked the valve covers to see if they are leaking into the spark plugs? If so, new ones are needed. If you don't torque them right than they will fail eventually, sometimes sooner than you'd hope, also torque them in the right order. Hope it helps.