I have been having problems with my T/A... bad gas mileage, blue smoke out of tailpipes, occasional backfiring. I have a bad MAF but that didn't explain the smoke. Today I removed the alternator to get it rebuilt and saw a huge oil leak underneath it.
I decided that it might be a bad intake gasket and tore it down. as i was removing the throttle body and plenum and the runners i saw that they all had oil all through them and was wondering would the bad gasket cause all of that...
Also I found what looked like a piece of timing gear(fiber) in the lifter valley and wondered if that might somehow have anything to do with it...

 

Bad gas mileage could be a number of things. Blue smoke is either oil getting past the rings or valves. Backfiring could be from a lot of things..including low compression, which could result from worn rings. Both of these, as well as bad gas mileage, are characteristics of a worn engine. How many miles are on it?

There is oil in the intake because the valve covers are vented into it, that is normal. A lot of it could indicate some problems, such as excessive crankcase pressure(is your PCV valve functional?). There is no possible way for a piece of the crank or cam gear to get into the lifter valley, I don't really know what that could be. If the engine was rebuilt, perhaps it was a piece of something left in there?

BTW, a bad MAF could attribute to the bad gas mileage. Is the smoke all the time, when accelerating or going up hills, when shifting, when starting?

 

Apparently, oil on top of the intake is a very common problem with TPI motors. When you put it back together, be sure to use sealant on the bolt threads and that problem should go away.

 

well here it is sunday night and i still dont have it all together yet...too many trips to the parts house already...possibly broke the injectors(another post) so i guess i am walking to work in the morning but anyways i guess what i was wodering is if the gasket had failed by the intake port couldn't some oil get sucked into the airflow? my car produces a *** awful smell when i really get into it. oh well i still probably need to replace the valve seals...also the piece that i found in the lifter valley was definently a part of a timing gear and no the motor does not seem to be rebuilt as evidenced by the amount of gunk also in the lifter valley...

 

Their is no whay a peice of timing gear can get in to the engine unless it was droped in their when getting built the only thing It could posibly be is a distributer gear and I even dought that I have seen a meny distributer gears break and get replaced and never seen the peices find their whay to the top of the engine.The timing gears are on the out side of the block and can not get in the engine with out help from the engine builder. I have seen bits of metal from the cam show up thow I built a 427 once and had the rokers ajusted to tite it was the firt engine I built and it striped almost every lob off the cam bad mess. I even had a Harmonic balancer come a part in side of a 350 once broke the skirt off of every piston in it and still did not get any metal in the top of the engine.