As some of you may know and have personal hands on experience with, my car's valve seals are pretty much blown

Basically what the car does, is after it sits for awhile, oil seeps into the chambers and when I start the car up for the day, blue smoke poofs out for about 10-15 seconds, and a little more comes out if I rev it high enough.

Now to dig down to the meat, I have talked to several mechanics during the year I have owned this car and they have all said, a seals job will cost you anywhere from 400-800 dollars to do. I spoke with my local chevy dealer mechanic and he gave me a quote of about 400 dollars to the seals job and he said he would work with me on the price (I know him, intellectual guy)

He knows of my car and he basically told me straight up....honestly if you are willing to spend 400 dollars on a valve job, I would spend it on something else. Like fixing the a/c, giving her a full tune up, or spending it on mods. The blue smoke on start up is more of an annoyance then an actual it must be done right away sort of thing. And he also told me he wouldn't worry about it.

But I do have some questions, I am not doubting the guy's intelligence when it comes to these cars, he seems to know my engine and he seems to know it well. He actually complimented on the car saying "305 TBIs they don't die, you can put some real hard miles on those cars and they just don't die"

But, if you puf out blue smoke on start up and your seals are essentially bad, doesn't this mean you are also burning oil internally within the engine? I mean, for instance if I stop driving the car after a day's use...and I unscrew the oil cap on the valve cover, I see smoke arising from within the valve. I don't know if this is something I should really be alarmed about or if this is something that must be taken care of right away.

Am I missing something here? Or, do seals really not matter?

 

I'd say repair the seal before it gets realy major.

IMO your main concern will be you never know how much oil is burned,
and could be that all of sudden the seal can go totally out
and stall the car(not sure if this happens) or lose lots of oil in very short amount of time.

sudden lack of oil in bad case can damage internal components really quickly and could possibly
cost u way more than a 400$ if something bad happens.

just my 2cents i would fix that.. but I understand A/C is important as summer is coming up..

 

Most of that quote is labour. The seals themselves are cheap and the job isn't hard. Why not have a go yourself? Then you can spend your money on something you really want to do, and have the satisfaction of having repaired it with your own two hands. Nothing else like it!

 

i'd change the seals and up grade to something better than the orings alone. the cost of parts is under 50 dollars and it's about as simle a repair as there is.

 

An upgrade from o-rings is something called PC seals or umbrella seals.Its also a very easy task if you own something that would build about 100 LBS of air pressure.You could also have too much clearance in between the valve stem and the head(valve guides)Put the cash into the ac and locate some heads have them done and do the swap.A little bit of oil is okay cause it lubes the stem,but too much it will enter the combustion chamber.

 

I was thinking of tackling the seal job myself, but I just don't have the time nor patience to do it. my local chevy dealer will do it for about 400 dollars which is fine by me.

Valve seals to me are deep engine work, and alot of precautions have to be made in order for the job to go well. Meaning, for me there isn't any room for me to make mistakes which I often make when I am working on my car.

I know if I do the valve seal job, something else will go wrong with the car and I'd probably have to spend another x amount of dollars to fix that.

 

Is it a good idea to just put a positive seal on both intake and exhaust valves and nothing else, would that work?