First let me state that the engine is LO3. Ok so I bought the car and it runs great. About 1 month ago I found coolant on the passenger floorboard and we all know what that means. I didn't have the money to replace the core at the time so I removed the bypass and ran the hose from the radiator right to the top of the engine. Ran fine for the last month. The engine ran at about 180 no matter what. So today I went out and replaced the heater core, what a pain in the @ss by the way, I removed the ECM to get a little room. Not sure if that is pertinent information or not. so after I got the core all installed I ran the hose from the top of the radiator, little hose, to the left heater core tube and ran the other hose from the right heater core tube to the top of the engine. No problems there, engine now gets up to 220 and goes right back down to 180 like it is supposed to. All the emissions equipment is currently in tact, for now. Before I put in the new heater core the car would blow a puff of blue smoke on cold start only. Now that I hooked all that back up the car blows think blue smoke constantly. What gives? Any chance the ECM is just relearning from when I dosconnected it? The car also has the SES light come on when the engine warms up. anyone have any ideas. I'm in the dark here. O2 sensor? Bad EGR?

 

The best way to diagnose it would be to pull the trouble codes.

 

Blue smoke is oil, and a puff at startup usually indicates bad valve seals.

 

ok so how can I get the codes while the car is already running? Is there a trick or do I have to hope that its stored? Also my car wasn't smoking bad before, why all of the sudden now just out of the blue? Are valve seals hard? Just have to pull the valve covers right?

 

It will be stored.

 

With the engine off, locate your ALDL, should be a plug sitting on the driver's side below the dash. You can use a paper clip, or a jumper wire to do this.

Connect the two points at the top right side of the plug and turn the key to the ON position. Your cooling fan should start and your check engine light will start blinking. The blinking check engine light is how you get your codes.

The light should flash once, then twice, indicating code 12. This is normal.

It will continue the flashing once, then twice three times. After this it will show you any codes that have been stored. For example, if you have a code 32, the light will flash three times, then twice. It will do this for a total of three times for each code present. Once it starts flashing code 12 again you'll be right back at the starting point.

As far as your smoke, it's more than likely that one of those bad valve seals has now failed completely, allowing more oil in to the combustion chamber.

You will need a valve spring compressor to change your valve seals. Make sure the cylinder you are working on has its piston at TDC, otherwise you can drop the valve in the cylinder, and then things can get problematic.

Compress the spring, remove the keeper and remove the spring. You now have access to your seals.

If you aren't sure of what you're doing, and have the money, you could probably have a shop take care of it for you. I had it done for about $300, this was about 10 years ago, and had never done the procedure before. I'm unsure of what the price would be today.

 

It's fairly easy to do the seals yourself. I did mine in about 3 hours, going very easily. Another trick to avoid dropping a valve is to push a length of clean nylon rope through the spark plug hole when the piston is near top dead center. It will prevent a valve from falling. The seals themselves I got for $2.50 and the tool was less than $25.