My car has a fresh 383 in it. And I have about 1100 mi. on it and it is using about a quart of oil every 2-300 miles. I wasn't sure why I was losing so much oil because when I drive down the road or the car sits at idle it doesn't smoke. But when you first start it up or when I first romp into it it blows a good puff of blue smoke. And my back bumper above the exhaust tips is turning black. Sound like a valve seal???

 

I dbout valve stem seals would burn that much. Did you replace them in the rebuild? Sound like a ring is not on correctly.

 

Yea. I had new guides and valve seals installed.

 

sounds like the rings haven't seated yet, or the rings not arranged on the pistons correctly

 

But would that explain the smoke on startup??

 

Here's a way to do a quick check of the valve seals. Run the engine up to around 4K RPM in 3rd or 4th gear, then let off the gas and let it back down to a slow speed. Mash the throttle and see if you see blue smoke coming out ot the exhaust. If the valve seals are leaking, the high vacuum that occurs when you let off on the throttle will suck oil into the intake, and when you mash the throttle, that oil will be sucked in with the intake charge and put out a puff of blue smoke.

Chris

 

I pulled my plugs yesterday and for the most part they looked ok except for 1 that was covered with thick oil residue.

 

on that cylinder, pull the valve cover, remove the intake rocker and pull the rocker stud out, look to see if the hole goes through into the intake port, if it does, clean everything good, and reinstall with some liquid teflon thread sealer

see what happens

 

Yeah. I guess if it was one of the rings, the thing would be smokin like hell all the time but since you said it only does it on startup and when you romp it, I'd go with "DAVE89IROC"

 

Thanks for the input guys. It just sucks having to work on an engine that you paid to have built. I took the plugs to the shop that built my motor. they were dumbfounded to say the least. They thought that it could be a pcv problem. I told them that I would put a breather on it and bypass it all together, and if my new set of plugs turned out the same way that I would drop the car off for them to fix it!!

 

A PCV problem affecting one cylinder? Not likely.

 

just what i was thinking

 

That's a good thought. Have you personally seen that before?

 

yes

 

Interesting. I didn't think those holes went all the way through.