Roc87

So, my father bought a '57 nomad out of town, I went with him to drive his '98 vette back. The nomad has (supposedly) a mid 60's 327 with a 700-4R trans. He wasn't on the freeway 5 miles and the coolant gauge climbed past 220, it was only 80° outside and he said it felt like it was vapor locking. Despite telling him I'll pull over at the next exit, he insisted to keep driving. It got to 230 a few miles later and he was slowing down to 50. After slowing down the temp dropped back to 210 so we kept going. After 35 miles I told him I saw oil coming out from the bottom of the car and to pull over. There was quite a bit of oil coming out of the filler neck, it has the corvette valve covers that do not have a place for a vent. We were near an o'reillys so I installed an inline fuel pump to combat the vapor lock. He checked oil and it was down 2 quarts. He filled it and off we went we stopped 2 miles later and the oil coming out the filler neck was worse! We ended up leaving the car and both coming back in the vette. Did he break the rings by continuing to drive it hot? Starts right up now with the fuel pump, no hesitations (vapor lock), seems to idle good. No oil in water, no water in oil, oil press @ idle is around 10, but is around 50 off idle. I'm thinking it may have blown a hg or did damage to the rings. Any ideas? Sorry post was so long

JohnZ

If it doesn't have a proper crankcase ventilation system, blow-by only has one place to vent, and it's pushing oil out of the filler tube. 230 isn't hot enough to damage anything - sounds like bad rings and/or cylinder wall hone/piston fit before you bought it. I'd do a compression test on it (engine warm, throttle wide open, plugs out).

SS409

It may be overfilled. What kind of crankcase ventilation do you have? Look in the back of the block and see if the block vent hole is blocked.

Roc87

Well it turns out that I always assume the worst. It wasn't out the fill tube/vent, the idiot light sending unit broke and had a steady stream aimed at the fill tube and the electric fans blew it all over the intake making it look like the fill tube was the culprit. Still have to determine why it was running so hot, so check the timing, change carb jets, put in a 160 thermostat are all in the works

JohnZ

Leave the thermostat alone, and read this to learn how your Corvette cooling system really works, and how to diagnose it:

http://www.lbfun.com/warehouse/tech_...em/cooling.pdf