Blue smoke on accel and semi wet exhaust

[TX82FIAT]

Folks, I have an 82 FI. Before going into all the details of the car and pulling the head I'm looking to narrow the scope of work. When I get on the gas I have a blue/black cloud come from the exhaust. To see if i could duplicate this effort I had my son hit the gas as I stood behind the car and the blue cloud was not as big without the torque on the engine. Out of curiousity I grabbed a piece of white paper and held it about 5 inches from the tailpipe and had him bring up the RPM's to around 3500 - 4000. Oil splatter in dots was clearly visible on the white paper. The car has been using a lot of oil but no longer has any external oil leaks that can be found. To the best of my judgement the splatter on the paper was not water and soot it is small droplets of oil traveling at high speed through the exhaust. No Cat, free flow resonator and free flow exhaust.

There is not to much oil in the car and the crankcase breather is clean all the way through. No signs of oil traveling up through the tube.

I pulled the cam covers off and inspected the cams/lobes and visually looked at the top of the valves but could see no problems with the limited view. Compression is good, leak down is good, spark plugs are not fouled and only have 1500 miles on them. Car idles fine and perfoms well with no knock or hesitation.

Thinking I may have the start of a more serious problem that i would like to correct. I suspect I have an internal oil leak or valve seal issue. thoughts on next steps?

[majicwrench]

The splatter out the back is condensation and soot. If it was actually getting liquid oil in the exhaust it would be a cloud back there.
For the most part a good puff on accel is just an engine getting old.
Keith

[TX82FIAT]

Keith, I agree that a good puff out the back is the sign of an old engine. This engine was completely rebuilt with only about 3000 miles on her about 13 months ago. Could be that when porting the 1800 head it was opened up a little too much or a valve guide is loose or something. I'm pretty certain based on these droplets it's oil. Ive had to add a 1.5 Qtrs to the oil over the last month with no real external oil leak to speak of. Is there a simple way to determine if oil or soot.

On the outside chance that it is oil, and that explains the high oil consumption over the last 200 miles, what are the most likely suspects?

[majicwrench]

If it was oil it would BURN in the cylinders and come out as giant cloud of smoke. It is condensation and soot.
Keith

[TX82FIAT]

Keith, I think you are right about the amount of smoke. Spent a few hours reading last night and I've consulted some pretty bright people on the engine. I think the splatter on the paper is from condensation build up after a couple hours and the soot flying at high speed. The high oil consumption given the overall strong engine performance and lack of other tell tale signs may very well be from switching to a synthetic oil (Redline 10W30) to soon before the rings were fully seated. The engine did go through adequate break in procedures but I may have used Redline too soon.

From my reading last night I hope I did not glaze the rings over. I'm going to change the oil to good old fasion Rotella 15W45 and run it for 500 to 1000 miles keeping the RPM's below say 4500 to see if that helps the rings. The other option is put a straight 30 Weight oil in and use that for a while to see if that helps. I did not mention earlier, but the last time I changed the oil after running it hard the oil looked diluted and i think that is from excess gasses. I assumed it was fuel in the oil from the rings and a possible wash over situation. However, the smoke has always been blueish in nature and therefore it is more probable that excess gases entered the crank case.

[narfire]

I was told to seat the new rings properly, I should run the car one gear lower and keep the rpms up for awhile. Not long,perhaps half tank of gas or so. I did this and no issues. The first rebuild I babied the engine not knowing a fraction of the things I do now, and had a bit of oil consumption through the rings,not much then but nothing now.

[majicwrench]

Not a huge believer in the change to Redline causing any issues with rings breaking in. Not a huge believer in all the unique ideas about breaking in rings. To break-in, engine needs to be run fairly hard so rings push out against cyl wall. And a lighter oil will help. This all happens pretty fast IMHO.
Didn't see in your earlier posts that it is using oil. How much??

[TX82FIAT]

About a QT every 300 miles.

[TX82FIAT]

Update, changed the oil this weekend to a heavier 30 Wt to run for the next 500 miles or so. Car is doing much better with the heavier oil. No visible puuf of blue smoke. However, there is a little accelleration rattle at high RPM. I'm just going to vary the RPM's and drive her under 4000 RPMs for I while. Must resist temptation to put foot in her for a while.

[So Cal Mark]

what percentage of leakage did you find with the leakdown test? Were all 4 cyls the same?

[majicwrench]

Hastings ( I think) used to have brief about ring seating, they wanted you to make a large quantity (20 maybe?) of full throttle runs one right after another. The point is to run the rings hard against the cyl wall to remove any high spots. Running em easy will not aid the ring break in.

[vandor]

>may very well be from switching to a synthetic oil (Redline 10W30) to soon

I think that oil is a bit too light for a Fiat in the Southern US. Even when I ran synthetics, it was 20w50 or 5w50.
I switched several engines over after a few hundred miles, and never really had a problem.

[124JOE]

im thinking he has a bent valve with a bad seal
rattling on higher rpms oil dripping into exh
causing the splatter

however im just guessing

do you get a tap tap tap then goes away?

[TX82FIAT]

Leak down was good, all cyclinder the same. I would not call it a tap tap tap that goes away. Listening to that car with a mechanics stethescope at various RPMS I don't hear evidence of a bent valve with bad seal. This is something to consider as there was no load on the engine at the time.

I'll do some runs this weekend pushing it some to see where things land.