O.K., so I jumped the gun about the valve cover filling with oil. Maybe
I was just really excited to see it run for the first time. Today I ran
the engine with the oil filler cap off to observe the amount of oil
coming from the rockers using a flashlight. It looked perfectly
normal. Just some small pooling at the bottom of the springs, but I
also wanted to leave the filler cap off to see if venting the valve
cover would stop the blue smoke. I did not see the smoke at first,
probably because it was dusk. I also put my hand over the filler neck
to see how much pressure was building up in there. There was suction.
Obviously I need to vent this, but it will be sucking air into the valve
cover. Now I don't know what to think. Yes, it is still smoking. The
smoke builds over the couple of minutes that the car is run at 2-2500
RPM until I let off the throttle, then a big cloud of blue smoke comes
out (high vacuum). I've decided to leave the tubular push rods in and
live with the slow filling of oil due to the fact everything else is
O.K. when it runs. Oil pressure is high, but it is a new engine and it
is not run long enough yet to thin the oil out from a high temp. So,
now the only problem is the blue smoke and APT is where I will probably
have to look for the cure. Either the head (valve guides) is the
problem or the head gasket. I don't get ot talk to Phil at APT until
Tuesday. David Anton is in England for a couple of weeks. At least
with the blue smoke the neighbors are not complaining about mosquitoes
and West Nile Virus around my house.
Mike MacLean
60 Sprite (nice engine, but she smokes)
56 BN2 (Hodge Podge Ebay parts engine just line bored perfectly, DW rear
seal and bores next)
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