not too sure if this is the right place to post this, but in my 87 t/a i have got the 305 TPI motor under the hood, not much work done to it, just a few bolt ons including headers, airfoil, and a cool air intake to name 3.
yesterday i was driving through town, my father was following me, when we got back to my house he informed me that my car is starting to blow a little bit of blue smoke, hardly noticeable, but to the 20-25yr car mechanic, he can smell a car running lean outta 50 cars running.
he also informed me that it is usually the valve guides or the piston rings that will cause the motor to smoke when running, i havent seen any blue smoke myself but now i am getting worried about it, is there anything i can do, short of tearing apart the engine and rebuilding my daily driver motor, that i can do to try to squeeze maybe another year or 3 outta it till i can get the money to get another car and start on a project motor?

oh i forgot to mention, the car has 167k miles on it, and i beat on it a fairly decent amount (ive stopped that since)

thanks for all your input guys,
-brian

 

No unfortunetly once its worn out its worn out thats all there really is to it. Granted just because its puffing out smoke dosnt mean the motors going to sieze up and explode. You may go through spark plugs fast due to oil fouling and the motor may wear down even faster due to excessive blow by gasses contaminating the oil but you could probably drive it like that for a good while before you end up having to put more oil in the car than gas or causing accidents on the highway because the smoke screen behind your car is so severe. What ide do is get another motor ready so youll have it on hand for when the motor has really seen its last mile. That way down time is minimize because you just gotta pull the old one out put the new one in. Being that its a 305 might be an idea opportunity to start prepping a 350 to swap in. Ide also recommend replaceing it with a motor with a roller valve train regardless of its displacement.

 

If it's a slight puff, it's not the end of the world. You ca squeeze more out of it. I had a 305 with 227K miles on the original motor and it still had great oil pressure and ran like a champ. If it's your daily driver, I would start taking it easier on it and maybe start thinking about using high mileage oil and change it more frequently as the contaminants in the oil could be higher if it is piston ring blow by...as mentioned above. I bet you could get another 30K miles out of it if you pay attention to how it is running now and keep an eye on if it gets worse or stays and keep up on oil changes, etc. Also, as mentioned above, it may not be a bad idea to get another motor in the future sometime and start building it as you get time and money so you can just swap. Though, you can probably pick up a pretty good running 305 that will just slot right in pretty cheap if you don't want to go the rebuild or swap to a 350 route. So if it does die, you have a good low mileage 305 that will just plug and play...if the 305 you have has enough power that you're happy with it now anyway. Just some ideas.