A friend of mine finished a 350 rebuild last year.
He basically had a machine shop do the bottom end and he did the top end.
Last year right before winter he finished it up and started it up on the last warm day of the season and ran it for 20 minutes at 2000 rpm, then drove it around a bit, going easy on it, and put on 30 miles. Everything seemed fine. But the next day the snow came, so it went away for the season.

Now that the weather is warm here, he started up his car pulled it out of the garage and was letting it idle for a bit but began to notice blue smoke as he idled. Knowing that blue smoke is oil burning we were confused.

The engine is new, the heads are new as of last year, and happen to be RPM Performers. Basically everything is new as of last year, it ran fine last year with no smoke but this year it has smoke.

He let it idle for like 10 minutes to see if the smoke would stop but no luck.
So he pulled it back into his garage because he did not want to cause damage by driving it.

By the way, the engine temp was great; the oil pressure was great, nothing majority wrong what we could see besides the smoke.

So I figured I would post it on here and see what you think and could suggest.
Neither of us has a lot of experience with rebuilt or new motors so perhaps this is pretty normal for a new build since it has such low miles.

Another friend of ours just said run it for a while and it might clear up. But figured we should have a second option because this other friend would run his car with his engine on fire and it wouldn’t phase him.

So, what do you think?

 

No mention of changing the oil. If he hasn't done that yet, do it, then see if it clears up.

 

It was done before he pulled it out of the garage.
Put in the Valvoline VR1 Race Oil.

 

So he's got a basically brand new engine, with about 30 miles + about 30 minutes of run time on it? I would think it normal to see a new or freshly rebuilt engine use a little oil until its fully broken in. How bad is it smoking?

dave

 

Not too badly, we didn’t notice it at first. Just reminds me of a car that is burning some oil. It is definitely would not work as a James Bond smoke screen.

 

Make note of where the oil on the dip stick is. Drive the car for 500 miles and see how much it consumes. A little bit of oil consumption is normal, although mine did not consume any. If it consumes more than half a quart, there is something wrong. Do a compression and leak down test just to see if something had gone wrong, like bad valve guides or something of the sort.
Was the engine pre-lubed prior to installation and starting?

 

Prior to starting the first time ever it was.

 

 

The piston rings just might need time to seat them selves I'd just give it some EASY drive time and let her break in