Oh, also about the vacuum lines, I set them up just like Dave at Motorsport instructed me. I had simply taken a picture before I fiddled with them when I pulled the engine, and then put them back exactly as I found them without even checking the order (you know what happens when you ASSume...). I have a picture of how they are routed now, but I may put the lines back to the way they were and try again and see if the problem disappears.

Mrmerlin, what should I look for when I pull the plugs? I think I would know what a healthy engine's plugs look like, but I'm not sure I would be able to identify the exact problem by examining the plugs on any engine that had a given problem.

 

well normal plugs will have lite tan color
Coolant exposed plugs will look like they are brand new with no deposits on them , except possible rust.
Oil burning plugs will have black tips.

First recheck the vacuum lines from what you are saying there is an excessive amount of oil bing introduced into the the intake, you could have mis routed a breather line

 

Could it be left over oil (from before the cleaning)still stuck in the cats that needs to be burnt off?

 

Okay, I checked, and the car is definitely burning oil. The smoke is bluish-white, and the smoke smells like burning oil (so my cats are probably fried). I tried restoring the vacuum system to its previous condition, swabbing out the intake, cleaning with brake cleaner, then revving. This did not change anything, and I even jacked up the front of the car to try to get the oil to drain back further to enhance my ability to clean it out. I replaced the vacuum system the way it is supposed to be, and pulled the plugs. Plugs 1,3, and 7 look fine (see attached pic), while the remaining plugs are caked in black crap (see pic). I will also post a picture of how I have the vacuum system routed just in case I hooked that sucker up wrong.

Plug 1 (3 and 7 appear identical):


Plug 5 (all others look like this one, more or less):


Some photos of the vacuum system:

 

Imre, I don't believe it's oil soaked up in the cats because it seems to only happen when I bring the engine up over 3000 RPM. I would think that if it was oil-soaked cats that it would smoke all the time. I suppose that it's possible that that is what the problem is, and that the cats only burn like that when there is a lot of exhaust flow over them, but my gut is telling me that this is a lower block rebuild. I really hope it isn't, but I just can't explain why my oil ingestion would get dramatically and instantly worse, like, overnight. It seems to me that all but a catastrophic failure (like a broken ring) would occur gradually, although I have certainly been wrong before, and Mrmerlin has certainly always been right in his advice. Thanks so much for all your help and advice, I can't tell you how much I appreciate everyone's help, and I only wish I could contribute more to the community than I already do.

 

OK lets start from the beginning . Have you ever been able to run the car without it smoking?
If so what did you fix prior to the smoking?

 

I have run the car for years without it smoking. In fact, I had never noticed any smoke whatsoever. I replaced the oil thermostat/regulator and the check valve in the driver's side cylinder head, then drove it for about 4-500 miles, during which time I saw no smoke. I then drove the car across country, and I saw zero smoke all the way through Iowa, although I was monitoring my oil consumption and it seemed fairly spiky, more on this in a minute. Around Nebraska, my father said that he thought he saw a small amount of oil smoke when I accelerated, but I had to look hard to spot it, so I wasn't particularly concerned. I made it all the way to Salt Lake City, where I stopped over at Motorsport. I talked with Dave, took a tour (awesome place), and replaced one of the vacuum fittings, while re-routing the system properly under Dave's watchful eye (pics above if you want to check). I then drove to the hotel, and I didn't notice any excessive oil burning, but I wasn't exactly looking behind me very carefully, as the hotel was just a few blocks from Motorsport. The next morning when we left for Reno, I stomped on the go pedal coming onto the merge ramp onto I-80, and I laid down the classic James Bond smoke screen. Up until that point, I could not remember any serious issues with smoking, and I've put about 30k miles on the car in the 6 years that I have owned it (of course some of that time was spent with the car in various states of assembly, but while it was running, I never saw anything like what I am seeing now).

A word on oil consumption:
Every 200 miles or so I would pull over and check the oil, and sometimes it would be half a quart below the previous reading, and sometimes it wouldn't change at all. Over the long average, the car lost a quart of oil every 470 miles (including the parts where it was smoking heavily, although I tried not to push it hard at all to prevent the smoking). It seemed to me at the time that the oil consumption was probably related to engine load, although I can't be certain because I wasn't watching carefully enough to correlate elevation changes with the loss of oil.

As a side note, I knew that I had an oil leak, but I judged that to be different, since when I stopped the car, I could see oil smoke coming from the exhaust manifold. Dave pointed to the back of my car and said, "looks like you have an oil leak", as the back of the car was coated in a thin film of oil.

That's about all I can think of right now, but I will be quite willing to answer any more questions you can think up. Thanks!

 

the oil thermostat is in the block just above the sender.
Did you in fact replace any parts in the head?
Is it possible that something has fallen down the oil fill ? A rag, oil cap??
Has the car ever overheated?

 

Yes, that is the oil thermostat I replaced. I replaced all the parts in the head but the piston that the spring rides on. I thought I ordered one from a vendor, but I couldn't find the shipping label, so I wasn't sure whether I got a new one or not, since I couldn't find a new piston. The large fedex box had been opened to get one set of parts and then left open with the remaining parts in it. It is possible that the small parts fairies got into the box and stole the new piston, but whatever happened, I didn't have the replacement unit. I wanted to replace it after I took it out because I noticed the PO had torqued the set screw in well beyond the three turns called for in the manual, and I had to pull like the devil to get the piece out, even after I backed the screw very far out. It turns out that the guy had pushed that set screw into the piston and damaged the channel that goes all the way around it. I took a small file and filed down the area where he had mushroomed the metal, and then carefully cleaned it to remove all metal shavings. I then oiled the whole thing up and reassembled it, putting the damaged area back where it was, and then tightening the screw to the FWSM spec. To do this I backed off the screw until i could not feel it standing proud of the check valve bore, inserted the unit, then tightened three turns, and the piece was held in place. I really wish that I had had another unit to replace it with, since I don't like ghetto-*** fixes, but I didn't have a choice in the matter. After the fix it seemed to be holding up okay, so I didn't worry about it overmuch, since I knew I had replaced the seal, ball, and spring in there. I'm as sure as I can be that I didn't drop any foreign matter anywhere in the area during the repair.
The engine has overheated once, shortly after I bought the car, and it turned out to be that the cooling flaps were mechanically stuck closed, which I fixed, and then never had a problem. Of course as soon as the temperature went up, I pulled over and let her cool down, so I'm pretty confident that there was no damage done then. The engine has approached the idiot light since then, but again only for brief periods of time during which I was trying to chase down an overheating problem, but it was not allowed to go overtemp and it was cooled down naturally every time, so again, I don't see that as being a problem, especially since the car ran fine once the problem was sorted (for the past ~8-10k miles). While I was driving up the mountains (and when I had the A/C on), the needle was a little higher than usual, but it never reached the upper white line, much less going over it, so, although I was watching it like a hawk, I didn't feel that I had reason for concern.

 

the part that you replaced in the head was an anti flow control for the oil feed ( it keeps the oil from flowing back into the sump)
I think that you have another problem .
Check the trans fluid level......


I just noticed that you have a 5 speed forget checking the trans fluid

 

Will do. Trans fluid gets ingested into the cylinders? The smoke is clearly coming out of the exhaust pipe, not just around it. Be right back.

 

Well, the trans fluid could not be the culprit, as I don't have the auto trans. I'm still looking for an explanation that doesn't result in a rebuild ;P

 

Im quite certain the Xpipe you ordered will solve this problem!

 

Hi Thomas.

Can this be an leak fram your valve-cover? I have this problem in my car.

To see this leak you must have a look under the car when engine is running. If there is a leak you will see the oil dripping down to the manifolds.

 

An uninformed guess:

Take a look at the positive crankcase ventilation hoses. These are the hoses that come from the valve covers and oil filler neck (and possibly somewhere from the block.) The emissions controls pipe the crankcase fumes to the intake manifold. It's possible that instead of jsut fumes it's also piping oil. This may be obvious to everyone, so forgive me.

What I suggest, and this is just a shot in the dark, is to unplug all these PCV hoses. Plug the intake manifold so it doesn't suck air past the throttle. Then see if some of the PCV hoses shoot out oil from and if so where the oil is coming from.

I can't think of any other way how oil would be piped to the intake manifold except the crankcase breathing system.