Re: [AMC-list] Smoking head on my 232 engine

[Frank Swygert <farna@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:00:04 -0700
From: "Thomas Garner"<Tgarner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

The smoke is definitely coming from inside the head from around the oil cap and valve cover breather. I took the oil cap off and it looked like a mini fire place. I also made sure the PCV valve had vacuum on it.
=============================

Thomas, run it a bit and see if the smoke doesn't clear up some. Smoke on the inside of the engine is either moisture inside "burning" out or severe ring blow-by. It's remotely possible that the valve seals and guides are worn so bad that some combustion smoke or exhaust is coming through, but then you should have a loss of power and compression. A compression test will help -- you should have a minimum of 85-90 psi on a high mileage (over 100K) engine, with 95-100 more like it. You may want to change the oil, as that will get any water that's in the crank case out. Won't hurt to run an engine flush first, or just pour in a quart of ATF after the engine is fully warmed up and let it idle for about 10 minutes. ATF has a lot more detergent and will clean the oil passages, so would a quart of diesel fuel. Just don't actually drive the car with the thinned oil. It would be okay to move it around the yard, but not driving any distance with a load on the engine.

If that doesn't cure the problem put some Sea Foam in with a fresh oil change and run it for at least
a couple hundred miles. You can run it with Sea Foam without doing any harm. The SF will help clean any deposits out of the rings.

If it still smokes out the valve cover after that you either have stuck rings that aren't likely to free up or worn cylinders. In other words, it's engine rebuild time.

--
Frank Swygert
Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
www.amc-mag.com


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