I was using a K&N crank case breather... Nothing internally to baffle oil. Fresh motor build. At idle, everything's ok. Driven in higher RPMs, oil sprays everywhere from that little breather. Huge Mess.

Did. This before and the builder went back through it because of oil loss. Not smoking much, just oil getting sucked up into the pcv valve and fed to the intake.

So here we are again. My thought is to use a baffled breather (and maybe even a catch can at the pcv valve?) or a crank case evac system like this to manage the blow by:

http://chucker54.stores.yahoo.net/morcranevsys.html

I understand the rings aren't yet seated on this new motor, but this is obviously unusual. If a leak down test shows nothing very telling, am I on the right track for managing the oil.. At least temporarily?

The build: 360 stroked to a 408. Eagle crank, H beam rods, forged pistons, aluminum heads, hydraulic roller cam 248/254 duration, 109 separation, roller rockers .600 lift, M1 intake, final compression is 10.5:1 - dyno'd great for the budget at 500hpp/520tq.

Just trying to figure out wtf is going on!!

Is the PCV valve working properly?

I've had one stick before, the engine built up crankcase pressure and blew oil out the dipstick tube!

Are there baffles in the valve covers? What type of driving? Drag race? auto cross?

I would add some baffles to the valve covers or get baffled ones

Just to be sure you have a breather in one valve cover and the pcv in the other.

Add me to the baffles crowd , without them you are going to have happen exactly what is happening , the factory didn't install them in the valve covers to keep a 50/50 weight bias ...

The baffles are there. Street car with a strip attitude. Pcv is new, acted this way with the old pcv. Forgot to mention leaking rear main seal. Again, fresh build.

Do you have engine breaking when coasting down in gear?

Excessive crankcase pressure is only cured by installing new rings. Evidently your rings are not broken in yet or they were improperly installed/broken. Anything you do is only a bandaid for a serious internal problem..

Something is not hooked right if you have a proper baffle in the valve cover.
I ran some MT valve covers years ago without baffles and it did this. I bolted a good sized baffle in the valve cover with the PVC valve in it and it fixed my problem.

Either that or your motor is junk.

Rings should and will seat within minutes of the motor running. Sorry to hear about the rear main...

Here's a very interesting short read on ring breakin issues. "breakin secrets" at www.mototuneusa.com

Remember to that you need a vent on each valve cover. Not just one.

I have baffles on both. I guess the leak down will tell the story.... This motor has been. 2 builds, both failures.

Id be looking for a different machinist/builder for the 3rd go around..

These guys turn out a lot of motors and are very reasonable to deal with. We'll figure it out & ill probably get my Bee's big block done for the hassle.

doing a leak down test is the easiest and probably the most informative course of action.

I had that problem on my 496. It was the higher Rs that slung oil. It wasn't the rings because it did great on a leak down test. I thought it was the longer throws of the crank. Anyway, a pan evac system pretty much eliminated the problem.

That's the thing. The last time this happened, before we tore it down again, it was only the high revs that did it and the leak down / compression was fine. I'm not using a windage tray, and I think that might help? But if the leak down is fine this time around, I'm going to explore other ways of getting this under control. I bought only the best parts (for what it is), and I trust my builder.

I’ll ask again, if you take the car up to 4-5k rpm and let it coast down in gear do you get poor/good/very good engine breaking? Does your exhaust show any blue under engine breaking?

This was a good day... wish I would have known there was a gremlin inside that orange box.

The motor from hell. I am going to light myself on fire if I have to break this motor down and repaint it AGAIN.

Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and we'll find the problem before I get 3rd degree burns.

No joke, but during all this I accidentally shorted my ECU, and I found the spare I couldn't find before today. So after I made my last post (insomniac), I went out & swapped the bad one out. I cranked the car - had the hood open - and watched/ heard/ felt a big explosion. My timing is way off. The backfire bulged both mufflers & actually dropped one off the head pipes! Well, there goes a couple hundred bucks for new high flow AAR-T/A mufflers. I hope that's all it hurt. I'm going to set the timing from scratch again. I never had it dialed in before because of other lingering issues (tach hook up, throttle cable bracket//spring problems and a very leaky power steering pump). But the timing was pretty close... or so I thought. I have parts on the way and the tach & pump issues are fixed.

Hopefully this is just a timing related/ ignition system issue.... Or a bad dream..... Builder is coming over in a few days. I won't crank it again until I have some supervision. I'm learning though, so that is at least good, right?

i dont care how much hassle your havin THAT SWEET CAR IS WORTH IT

Thanks. It's the only thing keeping me going. The car is so close to being the 'ultimate' to me. Can't come cheap or easy.

I'm glad your still working on it....even after it nearly killed you. It's just an engine. The hard work is done.