Brett - Yeah, I think they are black and gooey, it is really hard to see and my fingers won't reach that far. Maybe I'll stick a screwdriver or something in there and try to scrape a little off. Paint... Hmm, maybe I guess. Wonder what green paint would be doing in there?

I went and looked to see if I could see the valve seals. I *think* I could see them. They looked like umbrella seals, but they were white, not black? Isn't there some other material the seals are sometimes made of (other than the rubber or whatnot), I don't recall what it was, but I thought I heard people saying they like to split?

Should I try to clean the gunk off of the valves with some kind of cleaner, or do I just let them be and assume they will clean themselves once the leak is cured?

Thanks,
-dath

The only white seals I know of are teflon. Grayhook & I just removed a set of teflons from my engine yesterday. I did some forum research and it seems people have good results with the viton seals. You might try those if you can't fit the umbrella seals on your stems.

With the amount of oil you said you were using, the intakes of the heads would be black, crusty and gooey, with wet oil in the runners if it was a intake gasket not sealing. I doubt valve seals can leak the amount of oil you were describing and not be more gunked up than that. Do a leak down test before you button it back up to check the condition of the rings.

I agree with brett that has to be paint coolant does not stain like that

Okay, my plans are now to do a leakdown test as soon as I can find a tester and to replace the valve seals with either umbrella seals, or if they won't fit, the viton seals. If the leakdown looks reasonable, I'll button it all back up and drive it for a while and see if the burning stops or not. I still don't think that high oil pressure I have is a great thing. . . Seems like it would be prone to causing leaks and pumping too much oil up top to me. . . I'm already running 10W30, I don't really want to go any thinner than that.

I 100% agree with you... My plugs were oily on my old engine when I ran a PCV but looked fine when I ran the crankcase evacuation instead... IMHO, PCV systen has no business to be on a performance engine.. I can't remember seeing a PCV system on any performance cars at the track (and I'm not just talking about dedicated race cars)..

A couple of questions about crank case evacuation systems then . . . It seems like a really slick way of evacuating the crank case to me, but I'm unclear on a couple of points. The Moroso instructions say to drill the collector on the headers. Seems like it would be fine to drill just behind the collector as well, no? I have ceramic coated headers. . .

Also, the oval track application shows only venting from one valve cover, not both?

Here are the directions I found:

http://static.summitracing.com/globa.../mor-25900.pdf

TIA,
-dath