What could cause this heavy smoke ?

[Boothy]

After a gooddunking in deepwater, bonnet depth, the old V8 has decided to lay down heavy smoke, and I'm trying to guess why before I go diving in, (no pun intended)

It's a rebored reground engine with about 20 full days running in competitions and was as far as I was concerned fully waterproofed but obviously this is not the case, and following a good dunking in deep water the sump was filled with a mix of oil and water, about a washing up bowl full (possibly 3 gallons instead of nearly 2, of the mix) and no the radiator had not lost any water, so it's ingress from the lake.

It had probably got in down the dipstick tube or through the rocker cover but that's a different problem.

So a couple of good flushings out with mineral oil and 2 new filters and it's back to business or so I thought, but its smoking quite badly more so when it warms up.

The oil is clean and the oil pressure is good, the tappets are nice and quiet, and so far its not oiled a plug up but I guess it will tommorow when its next comp is.

So how could the water cause this ?

Possible damaged valve stem guide or stem,

Possible picked up on lower part on 1 clyinder,

How do I find it easily and more importantly quickly?

I suppose its plug lead of at a time to see when and if the smoke stops.

Any suggestions apart from stick to dry land.

Boothy

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Emulsivied Oil can be horrible and if it is a bit say in the rings - it can glue them up

Also valve Damage, holed pistons, etc etc so a compression test may be usefull ?

I would also be tempted to flush the engine via a quick oil change plus 2 x tins of FORTE engine

cleaner - nothing else, run for 5-15 mins tickover will do but get it good n hot

and them dump out the oil etc - will clean the innards up like you won't belive

Nige

[pat_pending]

Have you cleaned out the breathers?, may well be full of emulsified oil.

[Aragorn]

if your going to flush it, dont mess around with tinned "engine flushes", Just use either 50:50 mix of normal engine oil and derv, or if your feeling really brave straight derv.

I've used both on engines before with no ill effects.

[Boothy]

So a couple of good flushings out with mineral oil and 2 new filters and it's back to business or so I thought

I've already done it with some mineral oil I came by,so this is now the after phase.

I'm just about to set of for the Northern Challenge so will nodoubt find out today andwillpost up later, just to sort of keep you in the picture, just hoping it will cough and fart and clear it's pipes, and resume being a loverly V8 with Megasquirt, but have visions of the engine stand being dug out of the shed.

Cheers boys

[Boothy]

Well after a good few hours of constant running Sunday, the old girl had started to clear up nicely just a hint of oily smoke after a good rev up, little bit missy and poppy but that was to be expected, but then autobox got very hot a spat a load of oil out all over the snorkel top K&N type filter, bloody great help that when your trying to clear a smoke problem up.

Since rebuilding the truck I've put a big belly plate on and moved the exhaust pipe a bit closer to the box, and took the fan of the 19row Mocal cooler which used to be on the back, so basically I've stopped the box from getting any natural cooling and wrapped in a blanket so to speak, so I guess the box got hot and spat it's oil out via the breather, so that's another job now to cool it much better, box seems to working fine though.

Anyway back to the engine, it ran lovely and cool for a V8, used a little bit of oil, no water, 6 gallons of fuel, kept a good oil pressure, so I presume its getting a bit in via the stems, so have done a compression test dry, all cylinders were about 125 psi with the exception of one which was 115 psi, so I am happy and content with that and didn't even bother to oil and try them wet.

Plugs came out a bit sooty and wet but I turned it around earlier on tickover and it only ran for a couple of minutes, so I presumed that would probably be the cause of that.

Hopefully that should be the end of it for now, untill I get fed up and take the heads of for a nose, when I've nothing better to do and plenty of time to do it, probably closed season next winter, we'll see. Oh and I haven't checked the breathers yet either.

Thanks boys

[jacks906]

just to add to it but a mate had similar problem it was water in the air intake had soaked the air filter and gave him similar problems

could also acount for oil in the engine if you have the engine breather connected to your air intake

dave