http://www31.addr.com/~stealthe/irocz/rebuild/oilpan/

4 of the 8 exhaust ports have oil in them....so I'm guessing the valve seals are not doing their job. I noticed my car would blow blue smoke randomly...not just startup, but sporadically even when warmed up. With the headers off, well you can see how there is oil coming from the spark plug holes....

I don't know what to do...this was going to just be an oil pan swap and fix all the oil leaks with the engine out of the car. Now it looks like I might not even want to put this engine back in at all unless I just completely tear it down and start from scratch.

 

looks like oil seepage to me.

 

seems like with that much oil coming out of the plug hole it would have smoked alot more than a little puff. how was the carb jetted alot of carbon build up? rich? might have ring washed it possibly. how many miles are on that green machine? did it ever overheat?your also missing a bolt that might have alot to do with your oil painting on the inside of your engine compartment.

 

what type of head bolts are they?? is that silicone i see were the head meets the block or just oil? #14

 

Can I play, is it this one?

 

That is almost a mess.

I'd start by getting rid of the head studs; most likely, some of the leakage was coming from them. Especially where it appeared to be the head gasket. Coolant almost always seeps around them and collects in cracks and so forth. I have never yet seen a motor with them that they didn't leak. The rightmost one in the pic of the 2 center exh ports, the one right next to the plug wire that's still there, has visible fluid on the nut threads. Use good quality bolts instead.

You're definitely missing the bolt to where you can look inside the motor.... you can see the fuel pump rod in there. So that's one HUGE source of mystery oil leakage. As I've told you before, oil that comes out there ends up on the balancer, which turns it into a mist and the fan flings it everywhere, so that leak will guarantee that the whole engine room stays constantly bathed in oil.

What's dripping from around the spark plugs may or may not be oil; could be just soot and fuel mixed, i.e. just general combustion leakage, that got forced past the plug threads.

I can't tell, looking at the exhaust ports, whether it actually burned oil.

Your intake end seals obviously leaked. If in fact you were burning oil, it's not impossible that it was from the intake gaskets; after all, the bottom of the intake ports adjoins the crankcase.

Looks like you have several forms of head gasket leakage; I see fire leakage to the outside world (rear of left head), coolant (front of same head), etc. These wouldn't by any chance have been steel-shim gaskets, would they?

The rear main seal looks like it was a gusher. The whole rear of the motor is drenched. That's almost always because of improper assembly; like using sealer on the back of the seal, or just pushing it straight onto the cap and the block instead of feeding it around the lip; or not putting a little sealer between the cap and the block on the driver's side, where the pressurized oil is; stuff like that.

Pop the heads off. If the cyl bores are in good shape, it's probably reasonable to re-assemble it correctly, and stifle the leaks.

 

Some form of piping sealant was used with the head studs....head studs were used because of the way the Protopline Vortecs were, the bolts located in the rocker valley had no clearance. We could not get a socket on them to torque them down. Even with the studs, the guy who built my engine had to take his sockets and mill the sides away to get clearance, he broke 2 sockets torquing the heads down.

The smog pump bolt wa indeed missing, just figured I'd take a picture. Amazes me how there is not a trail of oil from the hole though, even though it obviously was flinging oil.

Does compression have anything to do with that? I talked to the guy that did the engine, he says the rings were gapped correctly.

All the gaskets used were the fel pro standard. (blue material)

The engine overheated once in idle, went to 250*. The new fan control wasn't turning on after I installed it. I just shut it off when I noticed the temp on the gauge.....don't know if that changes anything.

 

http://www.arp-bolts.com/pages/produ...headbolts.html
http://store.summitracing.com/partde...t=ARP-134-3701

Note the size and shape and type of drive on the head bolts. They'll fit.

The spark plug leak thing looks like what happens when there's paint on the plug seats. Compression doesn't generally affect it.

For whatever reason, the head gaskets weren't sealing. The blue ones shouldn't do that. The fasteners may have been over- or under-torqued, surfaces not clean or not properly prepared, or something. Or, that mess at the head-block justnction might not be fire leakage at all, but rather oil running down from above and following the crack. It's hard to tell from the pic.

250° one time isn't enough to damage anything.

I personally can't stand the idea of assembling an engine, then painting over the whole thing afterwards. Kind of reminds me of people who paint houses by slathering paint all over the light switches and outlets and window & door hardware. If I were doing that, I would (and always do) paint the castings and tin individually before assembly (including clear-coat on the bare aluminum), and every bit of that hardware would go into the carb cleaner and get returned to natural finish.

 

The heads are smaller I'm assuming...the summit picture isn't very good. So those hex heads are significantly smaller than the stock head bolts that didn't have clearance for the socket.

I watched the guy use a torque wrench to put my heads on. The vortec heads were brand new, the block was machined to .03, hot tanked/cleaned etc etc. I bought it from a friend who had it machined and cleaned. The mating surface between the head/block should have been more then clean enough.

Just seems like every possible oriface that could leak, is leaking. I'm going to get to get the guy who built the engine to mill me another socketso I can get the heads off.

 

Yeah they're smaller, they're like ½" 12-point or something. Rather like header bolts in principle.

It's pretty hard to guarantee a leak-free or otherwise perfect engine when somebody else is doing the work... I do all my own assembly, and as much of the machining and setup as possible, for just such reasons. No mysteries, nobody else to blame, I know exactly how everything was done.

 

Well at the time of the build...I had 0 experience with engines, and he had 15 years (albiet only on mopar engines), so I was more or less along from the ride trying to learn as he put most of it together. I didn't have much choice.....never in my dreams did I imagine this many leaks.

Guilty. It was put straight onto the cap, with black RTV. I believe sealer wa sput between the cap and the block though.

What really threw me was like 4 months ago, I was adjusting the timing and the car had been idling for about 15 minutes. Clear exhaust, then out of nowhere the exhuast starts shooting blue...solid blue, for a full minute it did this, then stopped. Often times I have seen blue smoke come out of my tail pipes once it's fully warmed up for 5-10 seconds then go away and not come back as I watch waiting for it to happen again.

 

Well, ya live and ya learn; next time you'll do better.

I remember the first engine I built, first time I fired it up; it ran, at least; but I didn't get the plug behind the cam in right, and it blew out. You think you've got oil leaks? How about a quart a minute or more? Then it took me a couple more before I got a rear main to seal up tight. And so on.

You'll find out more about your oil burning when you get the intake and heads off.

 

haha thats because its pressurized by crank case pressure when you rev it it does more than leave a trail ,it fogs the whole engine bay with oil spray.(ive done that before too )



heads look like they were not torqued down enough or proper. i bet this time it goes together it wont leak half as much. just take your time.

good luck

 

I know what the problem is.... Someone painted your engine green Sorry I had to say something.
Really though I agree with RB 100% you need to pop off the heads and intake and go from there but it looks like the engine is salvagable. I am actually surprised that there isnt more oil considering you left that hole open. Also this doestn have anything to with your problem, but dont you think 10:7 compression is a little much for cast iron heads and a somewhat short duration cam?Good Luck.

 

9 months of tuning, 11.9MPG was the best I could get on 94 octane....I'm seriously considering going down to 9.7:1 pistons.