Go-carter

Hello,

I have a 4.5 CIS, which after some attention at the fuel system, now runs quite good, far away from perfect, is getting 9mpg and poor performance under 2000rpm, but still pretty good. But a new problem has arrived, the last days it has begun to emit light blue smoke on idle, which disappears when accelerating, and generally when driving. After some searching and reading, I understand that this means new valve guides? Expensive to change?(ofc doing the work myself, if possible)

Or could there be other problems? The spark plug on cylinder no. 3 is COMPLETELY black, changed it 3 times on a 80 miles trip, but became black every time. Stuck/bad injector, perhaps?

Maleficio

Start running Auto-Rx in your oil.
http://www.auto-rx.com/

Start running Gumout's "Regane" injector cleaner in SEVERAL tanks.
http://www.gumout.com/ourProducts/highMileageFSC.asp

joejoe

My '81 had very poor mileage, and I finally found that the distributor advance (or retard) had fallen off inside the distributor. A p.o. had pulled the distributor and reset it one tooth advance and then fully advanced distributor. Car ran FANTASTIC but had very poor mileage (10mpg). I re attached advance inside distributor and re stabbed dist , and retimed. Car still runs great and on trips to sharktoberfest average about 26/27mpg (cruising at about 70/75) and get about 18mpg in town driving.. I am surprised that it passed smog twice with previous set up. Cannot help on smoke, but a check of timing may help with mpg.

Go-carter

Thanks, I'll check the distributor. That may be the problem, I've checked timing three times, but I always end up with power either under, or over 3K rpm. Never both.

Oh and btw, not only spark plug 3, but also 2,4,6 and 8 is black I found out today, measuring compression. So, either I made a complete mistake when rebuilding the fuel distributor, or the P.O. was completely wasted, and did EVERYTHING in his power making the car run with a clogged filter, and rusted fuel distributor. I'll try to measure the fuel pressure at different places tonight, to see if I can find out anything special. Now it won't even start, first the starter kept sticking(ofc after comp. test), and after i got it unstuck, the engine died and stayed that way.

EDIT: Got it started, guess I'll flooded it at some point. But found out that the so-called "new" distributor that was chenged before I got the car, and rotor, was FULL of corrotion, so there's plenty of reasons for the gas consumption, I'm afraid. Thanks for the tips!