Hello everyone it's been a long time.

So my 88 bird started coughing up blue smoke and coolant has been disappearing for the last couple months. Shes got over 171k kms so far. I took her off the road and started piling parts and cleaning the garage to get this out of the way.

I spent all long weekend tearing down the top end and finally got one valve cover off to find a thin, curved piece of metal sitting near the rear valve springs on the driver's side. It's about an inch long, notched on one side, 1/4 wide. I believe it floated up from the lifter galley but am not sure yet. Any ideas before I keep going on this? I have to do my valve seals too, but at this point with the amount of carbon and sludge I'm finding I think I might need an engine.

Also happened to finally locate my rough idle and hesitation issue. At some point someone had taken off the plenum and runners but neglected to replace the lower gaskets.

Thanks for any input!

it could be part of the spider that holds your lifter retainers .at this point I would take off the heads and intake to find out what condition the engine is in. as for valve stem seals,most likely with that many kms you will need to have the valve guides worked over.but before you pull the heads,do a compression test on it. you may find that your rings also need replacing.

Yeah, that was my worry. If it fails a compression test I don't think I'm going to waste the money on the 305. It overheated at least a dozen times last summer so I'm more than willing to bet something is warped by now.

Going to a swap meet in three weeks up in Barrie, guess I'll add an engine to my list lol.

Thanks for the input!