LUVTruck.com

Also, since you have the valve cover off, check the torque on the head bolts. It's a longshot but if the torque is weak on some of the bolts, you could be burning water and oil. white smoke- water, grey smoke- oil and black smoke- fuel. Whitishgrey smoke could be oil and water. A soft torque on the head can cause that.
It doesn't cost anything to find out and this way you'll be sure that the torque is correct.

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Previous setup: 4.1 Buick V-6/TH 350
Current setup: 400 Small Block Chevy V-8/TH 350
9" ford rear end/short bed/blue
What do Water, Electricity and Humans have in common... They all travel the path of least resistance.

After reading this reply, I unhooked mine cuz it seems to smoke bad everyonce in a while. Boom, NO MORE SMOKE!! well, not as much anyway (friggin crap carb) So is it okay not to run the pvc valve???

Did you install valve covers with an internal baffle? This baffle keeps oil away from the pcv valve. Running with a stock oil pump doesn't splash oil on to the pcv valve very much but a performance pump can easily coat the inside of the valve cover. The draw from the intake will pull in oil.

For street engines, i would suggest using a PCV system. It will pull blow-by gasses from the crankcase and burn them away.
Yes you can eliminate the system all together as long as there's a way to eliminate crankcase pressure. A breather cap will do just fine. The trade off is that the oil will get dirty faster because crankcase/blow by gasses will mix with the oil.
Make sure that the port you had for the pvc system is sealed off. You dont need an air leak.

Here's a link that covers it:
http://www.filtercouncil.org/techdata/t ... ntilation'

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Previous setup: 4.1 Buick V-6/TH 350
Current setup: 400 Small Block Chevy V-8/TH 350
9" ford rear end/short bed/blue
What do Water, Electricity and Humans have in common... They all travel the path of least resistance.

One side has a baffle, if thats what it is? Its just like a filter The other side was where the pvc is or was. Thanks for the info, it has definently cut down on smoke!!!

It should be a big piece of metal of some kind. It should protect the valve from oil but air should be able to get to it freely. Free enough so that the weight of the oil will run downward. The pcv will eventually get a light coat of oil but it's so minimal that you wont be able to notice any burning.

Your pcv hose most likely has a layer of oil in it right now and it will continue to smoke a little until it clears out. It would be a good idea to at least clean the pcv with some carb cleaner or better yet, replace it soon. The oil in it can gum it up.

_________________
Previous setup: 4.1 Buick V-6/TH 350
Current setup: 400 Small Block Chevy V-8/TH 350
9" ford rear end/short bed/blue
What do Water, Electricity and Humans have in common... They all travel the path of least resistance.

Once again I havent had any time to do anything with my truck. I might get a chance to do something tommorow after I go hiking in lassen park with my girlfriend for the second weekend in a row. Im currious to see what happens after I try covering up the breathers I hope it sucks air. My Valve covers are the tall cast aluminum holleys without baffles. I found them on the table at pick and peel for 10 bucks. The more I think about it the more I think its the intake manifold leaking (atleast I hope so). Im starting to feel like something wants to keep me from driving my truck. Every time I get one problem fixed it seems like 2 more problems happen. Im also thinking once I get the intake off it would be a good time to change cams and drill and tap the manifold so I can get some vacuume to the power brake unit. Who knows maybe all this is happening so I can change a few things for the better. If not I guess it would be a good time to find a core motor and start building a 400 or a 383.

Bugs seem to always come up. As for your valve covers, anyone in their right mind would have jumped all over them at that price. And running a tunnel ram coincides with that style covers.
Go ahead and pull the intake. Even if the intake gaskets are ok, it would be worth getting a fitting for brake boost. Brakes are your friend!

We all have to deal with oddball stuff that makes us go back into a project. It seems that when you get a problem cleared, the driving experience changes for the better.
For me, my headache was ignition timing/detonation. Once i cleared that, the rest of the motor fell into place.

_________________
Previous setup: 4.1 Buick V-6/TH 350
Current setup: 400 Small Block Chevy V-8/TH 350
9" ford rear end/short bed/blue
What do Water, Electricity and Humans have in common... They all travel the path of least resistance.

Luvnit, the baffle he speaks of is inside the valve cover. If you can see through the hole in your valve cover and see the rockers, there is no baffle. I you see a piece of sheet metal about 1 inch below the hole, that ,is the baffle. It's basically a shield to keep the oil from splashing up into the hole and up in your pcv system.

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OK, I'm over it. Where's the beer?

I will have to look. Off hand I am gonna say, I know theres not one where the oil goes in for sure, but as far as the other side, well I am not sure now You would think I would know these stupid little things Thanks rondog!!!

Things have been pretty busy still around here and once again still no garage time. Come hell or highwater I will do something by wednesday night. Lets all keep out fingers crossed its just a intake gasket.

I pulled the intake manifold off tonight and the gaskets look like the were doing thier job to me. I mean I cant see any funky spots that look like they were torn or discolored or anything like that. No matter what I am going to have to pull the heads now I dropped one of the washers that goes on the bolts that connect the upper and lower manifold halves down the intake runner and the valve just happened to be open. I managed to use a magnet to get the allen wrench out I dropped. either way Im not real happy about the out come. I guess I will try to get the heads pulled off tomorrow and get them checked out and redone again for safe measures. I think Im down to 2 problems now 1 the head gasket is jacked up or 2 Something is screwed up in the rings from sitting so long.

Let us know if the head bolts break away freely. It would indicate if the bolts were evenly torqued.

_________________
Previous setup: 4.1 Buick V-6/TH 350
Current setup: 400 Small Block Chevy V-8/TH 350
9" ford rear end/short bed/blue
What do Water, Electricity and Humans have in common... They all travel the path of least resistance.

I know its been a while but I just got the one head off. Some of the bolts were a bit of of a pain to get out. I started from the middle and worked my way out towards the edges. I dont think I did them in the exact right order but I did my best with out looking up the sequence. There were one or 2 bolts that I had to really muscle out. I did see one thing that I didnt quite understand. I dont know enough about engine building to be sure that its a concern but the head gasket between the cylinders were bare metal where the rest of the gasket material was blue in color. I have never seen a head gasket like this before in my limited amount of experiance. The last head gasket that I saw was blue with the metal ring around the cylinder not just bare metal like the one I have here. Other than that from what I can tell the cylinder walls look brand new I can still see the hone criss cross marks clear as day. If you have any input or any thing else I should be looking at please let me know.

If you had to muscle out a couple of bolts, they were most likely incorrectly torqued. Let's say that they took 40 lbs to get them to turn, the final torque would have been 40 lbs too low. The bolts should be smooth enough to thread them all the way down by hand. The blue color is most likely nothing. If there was a problem between 2 cylinders, it would have a black stain between them.

As for the original problem...
Look at the combustion chambers on the head. Is there a cylinder that looks darker than the others?
Is one of the intake runners stained darker than the others? And the exhaust side, does any one of them have alot of soot?

_________________
Previous setup: 4.1 Buick V-6/TH 350
Current setup: 400 Small Block Chevy V-8/TH 350
9" ford rear end/short bed/blue
What do Water, Electricity and Humans have in common... They all travel the path of least resistance.

Everything looks pretty uniform all the way across as far as what I can see. Other than the head bolts being torqued unevenly I am not seeing anything that is a dead give away.

Does your exhaust system have a crossover? My Buick motor had dual exhausts with the pipes crossing over to help equalize the lenghts. If this is so, you need to pull the other head.
It seems odd that you dont have any sign of oil burn within that bank of cylinders. Do both tailpipes show an equal amount of exhaust soot?
Try running your fingernail around each cylinder to see if there's any spot that snags. A cylinder with a bad oil ring could still be the problem.

I wish we could have seen the problem before the teardown. It's tough to troubleshoot stuff over the phone or on line.

_________________
Previous setup: 4.1 Buick V-6/TH 350
Current setup: 400 Small Block Chevy V-8/TH 350
9" ford rear end/short bed/blue
What do Water, Electricity and Humans have in common... They all travel the path of least resistance.

It is really hard to trouble shoot over the net but wouldn't a ring or combustion problem showed on a compression check. I agree pull the other head there has GOT to be signs of oil burn in one combustion chamber. If not put it back together you have other problems. You have definatly got me stumped.

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Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy horsepower...and that's kind of the same thing...

Is the head that u pulled the one that smoked? Also once u have both heads off try a leak down test on all cylinders. Also have any of the cylinders ever been sleeved before, that can also present a whole different set of possible problems.

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Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy horsepower...and that's kind of the same thing...

An oil ring doesn't do anything for compression. But it can fail and cause oiling problems to that particular cylinder. If it's failing and oil can make its way into the combustion chamber, the oil itself will mask any light cylinder scars. The oil will burn but compression will be pretty much normal. I'd hate to think that this motor has ring problems because it's so newly rebuilt. If it does have an oil ring problem, it will steadily get worse and the cylinder will become even more scared.

In all manuals, compression checks can diagnose a particular problem. By squirting oil into a weak cylinder, the compression will climb if the rings are worn or bad. If the compression doesn't climb, it indicates that one of the valves is bad or headgasket problems. So the compression rings could be working correctly but the oil ring may not be wiping down the cylinder. It wont take much oil to cause it to smoke.

This is why im still thinking that the oil is entering the cylinder thru the intake.

********BRAINSTORM!!!*********
What about the valve guide seals! If one of the intake valve seals is bad, it will cause an oil burning condition. Study all of the intake valves thru the intake passages. Look for oil at the valve guides. The motor will suck in oil thru a bad seal. Exhausts seals only show up upon startup and go away because gasses will try and push exhaust thru the valve guide into the crankcase.

_________________
Previous setup: 4.1 Buick V-6/TH 350
Current setup: 400 Small Block Chevy V-8/TH 350
9" ford rear end/short bed/blue
What do Water, Electricity and Humans have in common... They all travel the path of least resistance.

The head I got off is the side that is smoking, also it has dual exhaust with out a crossover pipe thats how I tracked it to the one side so easy. I dont see anything leading to any problems from what I have seen so far. My plans are to pull the other head off and have them both tanked, magnafluxed. and complety install new parts and put it back together. If that doesnt solve the problem then I guess I got a good set of heads for a new motor. The research I have done on the heads say they are off of a 71-72 LT1 and are 2.02-1.60 valves. By the way I fired my engine builder since this is the 3rd motor in a row I have had problems with. So if it turns out to be valve seals or something of that sort I wouldnt be surprised if it got over looked and slammed back together. hopefully I will get it all back together and it will be something in the heads. If its anything in the block Im going to probably just abondon ship at this point. This project has been a nightmare and im running out of patience.