Ugh, I am so sick and tired of this car.

Okay so anyway, my 1985 corvette had a puff of blue smoke in the morning on the first start when I first got it, this was when it was all stock.

I replaced the valve seals and it went away.

I installed a Mini ram, flat tappet version of zz409 camshaft, and headers, those are the main engine mods.

I replaced the lifters, push rods and valve springs when I did this also.

The car was burning a crazy amount of oil, and it puffed on the first start up.

I pulled off the valve springs again to do the valve seals over as I figured I may have damaged one when I installed the new springs, to my surprise, the stock replacement valve spring dampers snapped in a few springs and logged the broken piece into the valve seal.

I replaced the valve seals and the springs with springs from TPIS that are supposed to be able to handle .525" total valve lift, my cam has .495" total valve lift.

It was all good for a while and it was holding up pretty well, no oil burning, and then the other day when I was driving the car I thought I smelled that distinct smell of oil burning. Today I checked my oil and sure enough, it is burning oil again.

I am so fed up with this car. This is seriously unbelievable. I don't understand why I have so many problems with this thing when everyone else is perfectly fine? And my car was never even beaten on before I got it.

 

How many miles on the heads and block? If the valve stem seals are new have you check them after the last install?), it could be worn valve guides or possibly the rings.

IF the car had high mileage, and you had started to "beat on it", it's entirely possible that wear in the guides and the rings may be part of the problem.

 

It has 105k on the heads and block. The cylinders checked out at 165 psi during a compression test, camshaft had regular normal driving wear, and the rear gears had no chips or scratches or nicks in them at all, almost like they were brand new out of the box. The car was well maintained, the engine looked new, undercarriage, and the interior. It came with pages and pages and pages of service records and also the buyers guide from 1985. And the car was a show car and won awards, so this car was definitely taken care of.

I hope it's not the rings, because I don't have enough money to rebuild it, and if I was going to rebuild it I was going to go to a 383 stroker and I sure as hell don't have the money for that right now.

 

Worn guides are easy to check, there is a spec in the fsm for how much you can move the valve stem back and forth with the valve springs removed. Too much "wiggle" will let oil go past even brand new seals. I think an aggressive cam will accelerate any wear. My car currently is leaking on the oil pan gasket, and it gets on the exhaust while driving, and I absolutely hate that smell.

 

I'm not even going to bother changing them again or doing anything to the head because I'm buying AFR 195s probably in January and they come with a full valve assembly, (I hope!).

This way I won't have to check the clearances and risk assembling the valve springs wrong, so on and so forth.

I guess I'll just have to keep adding oil to it. :/

 

If it is not smoking out the tail pipe the entire time you are driving, or at least when you take off or accelerate, it may be worth a look to see if you have an external oil leak as well, with the oil loss you are describing. Easy check for excessive ring wear is to pull or plug the pcv valve and inlet and check for blowby at the oil cap.

 

That is a good idea. And it didn't feel like it lost any power either. And the car is always parked in the garage and there is no oil spots on the ground.

Tomorrow morning I am going to fire it up and check the tail pipe for blue smoke.

Is it possible for me to just replace the piston rings without honing out the cylinders or replacing anything else but the rings?

 

If the pistons are not worn out or damaged, there are no scratches in the cylinder walls, and your piston to cylinder wall clearance is ok, It is ok to just de-glaze the cylinder walls with a hone and remove the ring ridge at the top of the cylinder if present. If it is getting close to exceeding the service spec for piston to cylinder wall clearance, it will not take long before it will need done again, and bored over that time.

 

Old parts? (brittle)
Stock dampeners called out by the cam mfgr?

 

you stuff new heads on that thing with out doing the lower end my quess is your going to be going thru oil by the qallon most likely

 

and be carefull on the purcgase of the heads I think AFR along with most sell them blank

 

Okay well I plugged the pcv valve hold and breather hole and did the thing you suggested. It is a very small amount of pressure that comes out of the oil cap hole. I assume that it would be really obvious if the rings were actually bad with that trick?

I did it when it was cold, and I let it warm up a little to like 150 and I noticed maybe a slight change in pressure coming out.

 

They were OEM equivalent valve springs from Melling. TPIS said nothing about needing special valve springs for the cam, which is another reason why I hate them.

The lift of the cam was too high and broke the damper inside the springs.

 

It's normal to have a little pressure, otherwise a pcv system would not be needed. Just exactly how fast are you losing oil? It sounded like a lot the way you described it, so I suggested some easy checks for obvious problems.

Also, is it possible that the lift of the cam is causing contact between the valvestem seals and keepers/retainers?

 

So it sounds that blow by is not an issue. Start pulling spark plugs and check for oil fouling. Start at the rear (#7 & #8) and work forward. Chevy is known to blow intake gaskets.

Just a guess on my part, I am guessing at during the installation the intake gaskets did not seal 100% and you might be sucking oil from the lifter valley. Most ofter it is the last two cylinders that this happens to with old gaskets.

And you have checked for any external leaks?

 

I don't think I can accurately check my spark plugs because some are tainted by rich tunes and when the oil dripped down off the head onto them when the valve covers were off.

Also, for the amount of oil that I lost I think that I would have seen at least one droplet in my garage, I can smell it in the exhaust some times.

The passenger side valve cover had a chatter coming from it, which I suspect that another valve spring damper broke because TPIS keeps making assumptions with my set up.

And the intake gaskets are brand new also.

 

I honestly don't know how fast it has been. I have taken it out on a couple test runs for the tune these past few weeks, and I took a two hour trip with it. During that trip I noticed the smell, so maybe just in that short run. The last time I checked the oil on it was maybe.... 3 or 4 weeks ago?

I would have to monitor it more closely I guess. The problem is that I have to add ZDDP additive in my oil for my camshaft and every time that I have to add a quart of oil because it sucked it up, it looses more and more of that additive.

 

How often do you add a quart?

 

have seen plenty is damping and valve srpings break in these things I do not know if it is age or they have been ran to hard. I think a combo of all. I do know this not real ssure on the history of mine except it was flawliss inside and out everthing on the car seemed well maintained. but after having the car for 2 yrs and putting about 800 miles on it with out any issue. It was ideling and all the sudden it started missing and backfireing sure enoigh broken valve spring #2 cyc, checked a couple more and they had some hair line cracks

 

I haven't needed to until now after my valve seal installation.

Before I did the new valve seals and springs, it was every 20 miles. Then it was good for maybe like 300-400 miles, now it started sucking oil again.