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my engine still uses a lot of oil, quart or so every 100+ miles. haven't checked it exactly, but it's a lot.

brief history. after i got it took the heads off, and found that the intake was very loose and sucking oil. it was bad, the gaskets were wet along the bottom for all the ports. thought i found the problem, all else looked in good shape, so just did a re-gasket, (and cam, new intake), and put it back together. better, but still sucked oil.

leak down showed 8-10% for all cylinders, compression test good, (forget the numbers, but all very close). was sure it was the guides/seals. took the heads off again for this reason, (but also to have them ported), and found it was again leaking through the intake, (i didn't know these had to be sealed with gunk).

so here i am now.
- guides were fine, new seals.
- sealed intake.
- cylinder walls looked good, nice crosshatch still visible.
- plugs do not show signs of oil consumption, (maybe very minor, but i have nice tan insulators, with the slightest bit of soot around the rim, don't know if it's oil or slightly rich mixture).
- leak down and compression tests were a few thousand miles ago, so things could have changed.
- q-tip in pcv port at carb came out grayish, but certainly not what i would expect if it was sucking that much oil through there.

does blow a little blue smoke when starting it up after cold and sitting for a while, but not bad.

if i have been driving normal for a bit, and then nail it, it does blow a big one time puff of smoke out the back, but it's hard to tell the color from looking back. seems that clearing that once or twice is fine, then no more smoke on nailing it.

does not seem to smoke any other times but those two.

so where do i go from here? is it possible that my oil rings are in that bad a shape? engine probably has 6-7k miles on it.



Jeez, that sounds like what mine used to do. I was loosing a quart every 500 miles. At the time i had two problems:

Loose guides thanks to who ever machined the MP aluminum heads.

Too much piston to wall clearance again thanks to who ever honed the block (crate engine).

The big tell tail was oil in the tail pipe. The intake is major problem. Which gaskets are you using? Are they the thin ones? The Mister Gasket pieces are solid right accross and less likely to get sucked in. I know Tim uses the right stuff around the parts. I found the Hylomar blue works great It stays flexible and is not effected by fuel.

Have you checked the guides. The only way to really check this properly is to pull a valve spring and lower the valve slightly and wiggle it around. It may have a slight movement but if it moves alot, the guide is bad.

Mine leak around the breather tubes as well. Do you have the 70 and up covers or the 69 and down covers?