Hiya guys,
Well, as I;ve said in other posts I finally got rid of my 1986 T/A. I got dumb and bought another one. lol. This one has a Chevy Crate 350 and it's burning a quart of oil a week. Burning oil is a sign of bad valve seals right? Or is it Piston rings? Or bother?
Also, the thing diesels out when I try to shut it off. Suggestions?
TIA!
(ignore the sig - wrong car)

 

If the oil burns on cold startups and only briefly, then it would most likely be valve seals, but if it is constantly emmitting a cloud or puffs of blue smoke then it is most likely your piston rings.

-Gabe

 

Its quite easy to check with a compression tester. Test the compression in one or all of the cylinders, squirt some oil in the cylinder and recheck, if it goes up dramatically like 20-30 p.s.i. then your rings or cylinder walls are gone, if not then valve seals. Typically valve seals will only leak if you rev and then let off, that is unless they are totally gone. Good luck!

 

check your timing if it deisels...

 

Oil can be sucked into the intake ports around a poor fitting intake manifold or skewed intake gaskets. Something else to check into.

 

Thanks guys.
I've got my work cut out for me once the weather turns nice again.

 

Check for leaks too!

 

Check all your seals. I know after my father swapped the 2.8 into my camaro, it would go through a quart of oil every week or so. Finally, he found a bad seal (I wish I remember where it was) and put some sealent on it. Then he found a bad seal near the distributor, and it hasnt used a drop of oil in a month.

 

I doubt this would cause that big of an oil burning problem, but if your PCV valve is bad, your engine will burn oil. Just thought that would be something easy to check and maybe you'd get lucky. It probably is the rings though, or the intake gasket like five7kid said.

 

how would a bad pvc valve cause it to burn oil. I have been burning oil and i know that my pvc valve is old.

 

I'm not sure, but I've had several people tell me that plugged PVC valves cause oil to burn. I think it has something to do with the crankcase not being vented properly.

 

Eric is right about that if its plugged. If its stuck open (that happened to me a few times), it will spit oil into your intake. You will see oil all over inside your intake ducting and prolly in your air filter if that is the problem.

 

huh. Never knew that. Guess I learned something new today.
I checked the PCV valve when I bought it, and it was old and dingy but still moved freely. Guess I'll check it again.
Supposed to get into the 70's where I am, at some point this week. I'll spend some time out there tinkering.

 

PCV valve? that explains it. Mine was leaking right on the manifold, and was stalling because of vacuum lines not being connected. Lines led to PCV valve. I fixed both that and the distributor offness at the same time, and assumed it wasnt the PCV valves fault. What do you know, at least I now know why it messed up.