Hello I attached some pictures of my pistons and combustion chamber of my new engine that has about 1000 miles on it. I've been having trouble with it running too rich but today I took off the heads and noticed alot of black crude on top of the pistons. What do y'all thing this is ? Too much fuel? When I first started up the engine I went through 3 sets of spark plugs before I swapped out the 02 sensor.

 

Are you burning oil? Is your PCV system hooked up correctly?

 

Yup the PCV is hooked up, the driver side goes into a nipple under the HSR and the pass goes right into the throttle body

 

Anyone got any ideas what could be causing this ?

 

Are you sure that engine is new? Some of the water jackets have some crust in there that seems indicative of more than 1000 miles.

the combustion chambers and pistons also seem way more cruddy than I'd expect for just 1000 miles even if it is running rich.

 

Yes, the motor at the most has about 1500 miles, I didn't drive it much cause of the rich issue. Yes I built the motor brand new heads and new pistons aswell. You can still see some of the crosshatching on the cylinder walls from boreing and honing the block. Looking back at some photos I had the PCV hooked up wrong on the passenger side instead of connecting the PCV valve in the valve cover to the top nipple of the throttle body, I had it connected to the second nipple. Could that cause all that build up?

 

If somehow you're sucking oil into the manifold, it could yeah. Burning oil will definitely foul plugs.

 

After inspecting the HSR I noticed that it was covered in oil in the runners and the upper part aswell.

 

Could bad intake gaskets cause this?

 

I doubt it.

 

Are you running a PCV valve?

 

Yes I'm running a PCV valve in the driver's side that goes straight into a nipple underneath the Holley stealth ram, and the other side I noticed that I had plugged in the hose from the passenger valve cover 90° elbow into the second port from the throttle body, after doing some Investigating I know I had it wrong, it should be at the top port instead of the second. My question is that would that mistake cause all that oil in the chambers and runners aswell? Or would it be better to drop in a breather on the passenger side and run the PCV valve on the driver side.

 

It is possible that the passenger side hose plugged into the wrong hole could be the culprit. The second port on the TB is for the Cannister Evac.

 

I have a 383 TPI that was collecting oil in the plenum- poor break in? Installed a Wagner PCV valve on a group buy and a quality air/oil separator, amazed and disappointed in the quantity of oil collected on a relatively fresh engine- but the alternative is $$ If you research PCV's- they are quite application sensitive.