I have a supercharged 93 lt1 in a camaro. Recently it began leaking oil horribly only when it runs and it drips onto the passenger side header well i thought maybe it was the valve cover gasket or somthign so i took it of and checked it was all fine. btw it apparently leaks very bad. well i have 2 ideas of where it maybe leaking A. it may be leaking at the back of the intake or B. it has bad rings and is getting a tremendous amount of blowby in the block causing oil to leak from the valve covers. i cant really see where it leaks but im goin to test the compression tonight and see if thats right i plan to rebuild it anyway to lower the compression some and put stronger pistons and rings. if anyone has any ideas of what my problem is or any suggestions on how to fix it or locate it pls send me a mssg or leave a comment here and i appreciate any and all help
- Derek

 

I've never EVER seen blowby cause a back up of oil in the valve cover. What I have seen a lot is the oil drain back holes in the back of the heads get clogged causing excess oil to sit atop the heads. This is common for vehicles that see more sitting time than driving time. However, you said the valve covers were not leaking.

In addition, you never mentioned smoke coming from the tailpipe. Only dripping on the header. In order for rings to cause blowby, it would have to be consuming oil and blowing smoke out the tail pipe.

It's also likely that even if you had bad rings, (I don't think yo have bad rings) the compression test still wont show anything wrong. The best test for blowby is a leakdown test.

I suggest you power wash it and add dye to the oil. Then use the special light to see exactly where the leak is coming from.

 

What do you have for a PCV system? If your PCV system is blocked off the engine will leak oil from every seal, you can put a breather on the valve cover if you haven't already.

-Pete-

 

ihave put a breather and we determined that there was nothing wrong with the rings and i believe that the oil leak is coming from the back of the intake because i can touch it with my hand and there is new oil all over it
so i believe we are goin to take the intake off int he car and change the seals and put new silicone since i took the sparkplugs out and put them back in its running really really weird like horrible and all the wires are right and plugs are in correctly so idk wat the hell is wrong
thanks for the ideas
- Derek