ive been having problems with my 2.8 ever since i got it, i was getting blow-by like crazy, white smoke comming out my pcv and around my egr. i figured my rings had gone bad but i figured i might take the top of the engine apart first to see if it was anything i could fix with the engine still in the car. theres a couple things ive noticed which i hope is the problem.

1 my egr valve had no gasket when i took it off
2 there are no gaskets on the exhaust manifolds
3 when i pulled the heads the top of the pistons and a nice layer of carbon buildup on the top
4 theres also a nice layer of carbon over my valves

the engines got 150,000 miles on it, i only need it to run for a couple more months. im figuring its my valves. i think they might be sticking, which would cause the smoke to build up. my exhaust valves look as they might not even be opening, im gonna take them out tonight, clean them up and resurface them. but i was wondering if anybody had any other ideas of what my problem could be.

 

1. There should be one. Put one in when you put it back together.
2. The factory never uses gaskets there. If there's no gasket, it doesn't fail. No reason to put one in there either.
3. Normal
4. Normal

Valves almost never "stick". Even if they were, they wouldn't cause smoke to "build up". Whatever your motor is doing, it isn't because of that.

They're opening, you can believe that. The motor won't run without them opening. If even ONE wasn't opening, like from a flat cam lobe or whatever, you'd know it; every time you tried to accelerate, you'd hear pop-pop-pop-pop out of the intake, and the car would be WAY down on power (hard to tell with one of those I'm sure, but still). So cross that one off your list too.

Getting a valve job is a great idea. Go ahead and do that. They'll clean the heads up too.

The smoke is likely to be from the valve guide seals. I have no clue what that motor uses for seals; but if it's possible to put "positive" ones on it, then do that. Don't mess around with O-rings or umbrella seals, they are useless.

There is exhaust in the intake, at the center. If the intake gasket goes bad, exhaust gas will go right straight through there and into the crankcase, and you'll get what looks like blowby. I'd look at that real carefully as the source of the smoke.

If the valve guides aren't too bad, and the intake gasket sealed around those exhaust ports, then it needs rings (that being the only other possible source of blowby), and you're wasting your time and money putting the heads back on it.

 

the carbon buildup is beyond normal im positive of that, and i think my valves could be sticking because i can see imprints in the carbon buildup of my piston hitting the valves.