I was going to take my TA out for a drive this morning. It was hesitant, so I gave it time to warm up. Backed out of the drive and it stalled, so I cranked it again, revved it a few times and backed out.

I looked back to where I'd backed out...and there was OIL under where my TAILPIPES had been. The oil was spraying out of the pipes...a fine mist, but there. PLEASE tell me I didn't blow my block and this is fixable. If it's not, I can't get another TA and I don't think I could handle that...

Valve covers are less than a year old. Car has 95k miles.

 

it's just carbon that builds up in your tailpipes combined with condensation that is blowing out.... Nothing to really worry about.

 

No...it's oil. I dipped my finger in it, smelled it, and rubbed it. It's oil and it just started this morning. I'm wondering if my leaky intake finally led to the intake gasket coming apart.

 

The intake gasket coming apart wouldn't have anything to do with oil in the exhaust. No oil goes through your intake.
You could have no intake gasket, and not have oil in the exhaust.

 

If oil is pouring out of your exhaust as you suspect, check all your plugs and you'd see oil all over them. I'm still going to say all you have is condensation from the cold weather. If your car runs rich or burns a little oil, it'll build up in your exhaust pipes quite quickly. Add water to that and it'll do exactly what you described is happening. My car does it all the time.


Oil is easily sucked in from the lifter valley if the intake gasket fails.

 

I would believe condensation if it was only a little...but this?? And that's from my crappy cell phone camera...


This was after the engine/pipes were warm and this was taken 4 hours after being laid on the pavement.

 

Thas not oil its carbon build up and crap coming out of your exhaust like 88Iroctpi350 said.

 

what he said

 

Run some Seafoam through her every once in a while...

 

how did you think that was oil... if your oil was that color, i think you should change it..

 

yep, i get two streaks like that if i havent run the car in a while.
i call them my "skid marks"
its just carbon, water, and gasoline/oil mix.
pretty harmless.

seafoam will help if you have lots of carbon buildup in the motor, but if the motor is at all suspect and not running great, you might want to skip the seafoam.
ive heard of cars where after a seafoam clean out, the compression dropped way down and the car barely ran.
just food for thought.
if it were me, id pour some in the gas tank when you are almost completely empty, put a gallon or so of gas in it and drive it until its empty again.
its a bit less agressive.
if it gets better, then do the full on vaccum line method

 

No, really, don't do that. Run clean gasoline through it once in a while, no SeaFoam. Water in your crankcase is not good. Water in your injectors is even worse.

 

i thought seafoam was essentially alcohol and water mixed. the alcohol evaporated the water that was left in the system
i may be wrong though

 

i agree i think most high mileage cars have a little of that blowing out.

 

your car is carburated right? check the choke pulloff. if the choke pulloff is had a vacuum leak, the choke will stick completely shut when the motor is cold. this will cause the motor to chug and foul plugs because it is running extremely rich. the exhaust will also fill up with unburnt fuel. i had the exact same thing happen to my 84 and that was the problem. the mess mine left was actually even worse.

to check the choke pulloff, take the vacuum line off of it, manually push it in all the way, put you thumb over the vacuum port and see if it comes out again. if it stays in, it is still good. if it comes out at all, toss it.

 

They're more like trouser tracks.

 

Well, the problem was fixed anyway. I just tuned the carb down and fixed the problem. It's fine now... Besides, I figured if oil was coming out the tailpipes, it looked like that because of a bigger problem. I'd just changed the oil in it a month before.

 

I wouldn't worry about it, its just something carbureted engines do, especially when they haven't been run for awhile and in cold weather. If it has no cat, its also more likely to do that. Mine does it sometimes in cold weather if I havent started it in awhile.