Ok i have an oil leak that i'm trying to locate. i have a 91 formula, 355, edlebrock 750 carb, slp headers, 74 cc heads, mild cam yata yata... I had the car running good for like a weak before i went to the track. no leaks or smoke or anything under all engine loads. well i go down to the 1/4 mile track and on my first pass i started smoking real bad down the track. i get back to the pits and theres oil all over the passenger side engine bay. so i checked the oil again and it was pretty full. Before leaving for the track i added a quart because the deepstick looked a little low and it read ADD. i'm think perhaps since the oil was fairly new maybe i added a quart too much. i checked the deep stick and it didn't look like it was comming out from there but maybe it did. So i drive home pissed off and scared something was seriously wrong. car was completely fine the entire 80 mile drive home. i get home and looked around some more and saw that the valve cover gasket looed like is was cracked so a replaced it. i looked all over the area and so no clear indication of where the leak came from. so as of right now my two best guesses are cracked valve cover gasket and maybe too much oil. since i have not been able to reproduce the event. any ideas? too much crank pressure? i have a breather on the driver side valve cover and a pcv valve dealy on the passenger side running to the carb. is that enough?

 

yes that is all that is required but the reason the oem setup vents into the intake track from the valve cover is because oil mist will come from the breather and coat that side of the engine compartment... okay if you arent running the car every day and dont really car but for a dailly driver there is a better setup...


i assume you have removed the A.I.R pump on the passenger side of the engine bay... did you replace the bolts that were holding the pump in?

 

thanks.. yea as far as i recall all holes are plugged. it hasn't done it again since i replaced the valve cover gasket, but every time i start the car a cloud of smoke comes out the tail pipes.. i've learned that thats signs of bad ring seals. so maybe the rings didn't seal correctly. do you know of any other reasons i could be blowing out white smoke out the tail pipes on start up?

 

Oil smoke on startup is bad valve stem seals, not bad rings.

 

i had prob very similar and cound't figure it out happened on three motors is the oil sparyed towards front if so could be two things front main seal and or ur balancer has a deep grove wore in it and eating up seal thats what happened to me didnt check the balancer and reused it and ended up with same prob 300 miles into a new motor
every chance u get u should check out lil things most over look

 

you mean the crank balancer? i have my old L98 balancer on there and i think it's too small. can't read the timing mark off of it. what do small blocks use as a standard balancer? 8"?

I'm not too worried if it's the valve stem seals cause i didn't plan on using these heads very long. i'm planning on getting some performance heads soon. main thing i'm concerned with is the bottom end.

 

smoking only on start up is valve stem seals... fairly cheap to replace but it is a ball buster to do it in the car... if it was smoking constantly i would think rings but only at start up is deff stem seals

 

hopefully thats what it is. i'm just scared to go ahead and get the heads and cam i want and find out i actually have bad rings. just makes me a little worried. how can i check for bad rings aside from taking the motor out and apart? would a compression check tell me anything?

 

it could , but leak down test would be better

 

how do i perform a leak down test? never done it before.