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I just put a 327 in my luv. The motor was just rebuilt last year and it has less than 10 miles on it. last night I started my truck to move it out of the garage so I could wash the dust off of it and noticed the right side tail pipe was blowing a whitish grey smoke pretty heavily. its only smoking on the one side and the motor is like new why is this happening?

When was the last time you had it running before this?

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

I would probably guess somewhere around a month or so ago.

shame on you for letting a 327 in a luv sit up. but any how you probably have a bad seal on your head gasket. im not an exprt but it seems to me that maybe your head gasket shifted or your valve cover gasket shifted when you put it together. just my opinion not for sure but its an inexpensive way to check. good luck

Trust me I know its a shame I feel guilty everytime I go in or out of the garage. I would love to drive it every day but it just needs to much work the way it sits right now.

Did you let it run for awhile or just long enough to move it??? Could be a valve seal or maybe a ring !!! Sometimes if a valve seal is leaking passed it will smoke when you first fire it up...Just an idea !!!

My truck sat for about a week here recently when I went to Modesto, and when I fired it up, it smoked like that for a minute or two. Once I got going down the road it went away. I would say, take it around the block and then let us know whats happening!!!!

I talked to my girlfriends dad last night he is a mechanic. he told me to check the plugs. He said its hard to tell what it could be and it could be a lot of things. I would guess its not the valve seals because it ran long enough to get up to around 100 degrees and the smoke never let up one bit. He also mentioned something about a ring could have hung up or something because it has been sitting for a while. I dont know what it is at this point. Tomorrow night I am going to do a compression check on it and probably start tearing it down from there. I also remember that it was it was full of oil the last time I started it before it started smoking and last night it would barely show on the dipstick.

Ok I just checked the plugs and they all look pretty uniform all the way across on both sides. They are a little wet though but they seem to match pretty closely to the side that isnt smoking. I did pull the valve covers off just because and I noticed the side that the smoke is coming from has quite a bit of standing oil in them. The other head has less than half the amount of oil pooled up. I dont know if that is relevent or not but its somthing that did catch my attention. Is it possible that my intake manifold could have a leak causing a vacuume that is pulling oil from the valley to the cylinder?

Just a thought but is it blue smoke or white smoke? Had a 350 one time that bent a push rod on the intake valve. It would open the valve enough to fire but not enough to burn completly. It load up that side of the engine and smoke like crazy then it would go away. Also I have seen high mileage engines get the drain-holes stopped up in the head. Have you tried that?

One more thought. I have crushed a lifter before and got a similar result. Have you cranked the engine with the valve covers off? Hope I have been some help.

Josh

I havent tried cranking it with out valve covers off. I did pressurize the radiator to about 16 pounds and cranked the motor with out spark plugs to see if any water would leak out through the head gasket no results there either. I was thinking the other night that I didnt notice smoke before I had to pull the intake manifold off a while back so I am wondering if it could be a vacuume leak somewhere from the intake manifold. I was planning on spending the day today trying to figure it out but my plans seem to get changed for me everytime I try to get something done. So if I get home tonight before it gets too late I will probably start tearing into it.

By the way I have been considering selling it so if anyone is interested let me know.

This is a long shot... Do you have a PCV system on the motor? If so, are you using aftermarket valve covers? If this is also true, does the valve cover have a baffle at the PCV grommet?
Without a baffle, oil gets spashed up on to the PCV valve and gets sucked into the motor. This will make it smoke all the time.

Disconnect the PCV hose and cap it to the carb. Run the motor for a little while and see if the smoke fades away.

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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.

I dont have a pcv set up I am running a tunnel ram with 2 holley 4160 race carbs that dont have any accessory ports Other than the vacuume that comes off of the metering plates. Im thinking its something to do with the head gasket or a bad hole from a ring hanging up.

Two carbs???!!!

Are you sure it's not just unburned gas pouring out the tail pipe?


J.K.

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

Regardless of the smoke color, the problem is only on one row of cylinders. And since your running a tunnel ram, any carb problems would affect all cylinders.
So it looks like you'll need to pull the intake and inspect the gasket surface. Hopefully, you'll find a bad gasket area and you wont need to remove the heads.
Question... What do you have in place of a PCV system? Is the motor completely sealed up? That can cause problems because crankcase pressure needs to go somewhere. If there's pressure in the crankcase and vacuum in the intake, the gasket can get sucked in and that gives a path for oil to get in to a cyl.

_________________
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.

We might be on to something here. One of my valve covers has a block off plate inside where the PCV valve should go. I looked at it and never really paid any attention to it last year when I put them on the motor. I do have breathers in both valve covers I thought that would be good enough. If this is infact the problem how do I go about installing a pcv system. For some reason off the top of my head I am thinking that there is a hose that runs from the PCV valve to the carb. If that is the case I dont have that hose barb on either one of my carbs. Well I hope someone out there reading this is smarter than I am LOL

You could be sucking up oil from the bottom of the intake gasket. Pull both breathers off and put your hands over them while the engine is running and see if you feel a suction, it will be slight but noticeable if there is a gasket leak. Hope this is just another idea that helps before a tear down.

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1978 pro street step/side 455Buick, 4sp,4.11s, 31/18.5s

If you have at least 1 breather, you wont build up crankcase pressure. Without a PCV system, the oil will get dirty, faster because spent gasses will bleed past the pistons and muddy up the oil.
For racing, you can do without because you'll be changing oil far more frequently than a daily driver. A tunnel ram intake wasn't designed for this particular emission control system.
Since you're running without a PCV system, that line of thinking doesn't apply.

I still think that you have an intake gasket problem. Crankcase oil can be sucked into the intake/head causing the smoking condition.

_________________
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.