There is alot going on so I will start from the beginning.

I was on my way to get my car dynoed on saturday when my car would stutter at WOT in 3rd + gears. I drive it home and try to diagnose whats going on.
Next day I get to work on the car and it went from stuttering at WOT to running like complete crap all the time except for at idle.
It would have a hard time starting and when It did run and after I warmed up the motor it would choke and sputter when ever I tried to rev the motor.
Fast forward to today and after much troubleshooting I replace the maf and that eliminated the hard starting issue and it would rev up fine while parked. Then I started to notice more and more blue smoke while letting the car idle. Looking deeper I found what appeared to be a exhaust leak on my passenger side header. I am running on a stock pvc system. I took the car for a test drive 4 blocks away to a coffee shop I frequent (car still ran like crap) and parked the car. Did some more reading here about the blue smoke issue and did the dipstick vacuum test to see if I was having internal issues. I started the car and was getting air blowing out.
****.
A while later I leave and the car was still running like crap so no change.
A block away from where I park the car I start hearing a very loud and high pitch squealing noise coming from the engine bay. The squealing would stop if I accelerated. I get to the shop and turn off the car immediately since I knew this was really really bad. I pop the hood and get overwhelmed by a extremely terrible smelling smoke like something burning but not any type of fluid that goes into the car. The smoke appeared to be coming from the lower driver side of the engine bay along with the squealing. I inspect around the top and bottom of the engine bay and cannot find any fluids. I start up the car again to see if I could pinpoint it. I start the car and it idles at 2000 or so rpms and I still couldnt pinpoint the smell or sound since it was dark. So the car ran for around 10 seconds before I shut it off and do not want to run it anymore. I for the life of me have no idea what is going on but I have a feeling that whatever it is its probably really bad and will probably require me to pull the motor back out. The car ran great before saturday so I have no idea what could cause my car to go to hell so quickly.
The motor is from a 98 camaro and had 25000 miles on it and is swapped into a e36 bmw. Specs are in my sig.
thanks for reading and any help at all would be appreciated.

 

Have you pulled any engine codes? That should be one of the first things to do.

 

cant. No obd2 code reader since it was put into a OBD1 car. No code reader attached.

 

I'm going to move this to the General repairs and Maintenance section. You will probably get faster help there.

 

Really nobody?

 

I would guess one of your pulleys has gone south. Pull the belt off and, by hand, spin the alternator, idler pulley, power steering, etc pulleys. One of them is bad. They shouldn't make any grinding, scraping or any other horrible noises. They should spin easily and freely. On a complete guess based on where the smoke and sound were coming from, I would say the alternator pulley is bad. That means replacing the alternator. You could probably replace JUST the pulley if you could find one, but I wouldn't.

Remember, even when you find the bad pulley, check ALL the others. The idlers and belt tensioners tend to get squeaky from lack of grease and one or more may also need replacement.

 

Thanks for the advice. It is a very strange problem since right as soon as the smoke and squealing appeared the idle jumped and stays at 2000 rpms. But from what I could tell it looked like the smoke was coming from the way back of the motor. As in by where the header runs and next to the firewall on the driver side. But I have no idea what would cause excessive smoking from that area or how if it were a internal problem the smoke would escape from the block without totally messing up the compression. I am going to look at it today with my buddy and see whats going on. I just hope the motor doesnt blow in the process and completely mess up the block.

 

You are really shooting in the dark without having access to what the PCM is seeing. You might wire in an ALDL to the PCM so you can read codes. Let me know if you need to know how to do this.

 

Some news. I was completely wrong and I am stupid. We took the oil cap off while the car was running. Squealing stopped btw and dont know what happened. Anywho we took the oil cap off with the car running and the amount of air the motor is sucking is ridiculous.
The sound it made when we took off the oil cap could only be comparable to a turbo blow off valve and had the suction of a shop vac. WTF???

 

mabe the pvc is cloged? or the vac pump is freeking out? allso one thing to check if it runs good untill u hit the gas is the throttle position sensor. but if u got blue smoke, thats oil burning & with what your saying i'm thinking mabe a bent or droped valve :/ it's EZ to check! just put a vacuum gauge on one of the manifold vacuum ports (hose going to brake booster will work). your not to cunsernd about what the reading is but wether the nedil is dancing arownd or holding still well it's runing. if it is jumping arownd you have a valve trane prob and shuld then do a compreshin check. & like joshp14 sed, get your obdII port wired up it can help point you in the rite derechon.

 

We did a compression check on all of the 6 front cylinders and they are all the same. Couldnt check the back 2 because they are very hard to get to.

 

Check to see if your PCV valve is stuck open.

Was that sucking constant...or was it on, off, on, off?

Did it change with rpms?

.

 

the inside of the engine- the entire space above the oil pan to the underside of the pistons, and the space above the valve covers- can either have more or less air pressure than outside the engine. If you were to completely seal the engine when you built it, no valve cover breathers, used silicone and gaskets everywhere, then the internal airspace of the engine would build up pressure when running because you will always get some minimal blow by from combustion (which is normal). Typical cylinder pressures are 180 psi when just cranking the engine, when there is combustion it is much higher than that, so it should not be hard to see how you could significantly pressurize the inside of the engine. When you do that the weakest seal points are the crankshaft seals on the front and rear of the crank and they usually blow out or deform and allow lots of oil to leak.

on the other side if you have a completely sealed engine and have a pcv system hooked up in which case the cylinders on the intake stroke are sucking air from the crankcase. You can create a significant vacuum in the crankcase, which was evident by you removing the oil cap and observing a huge inrush of air. What looks like was forgotten was a breather vent on the opposite valve cover. With a pcv system hooked up, air is constantly sucked from the crankcase, so you need an inlet somewhere for air to flow back into the crankcase so crankcase pressure is as close to atmospheric pressure as possible.

since you have an engine swap on your hands, i would go through all things electrical. Make sure you have good clean engine grounds, you have 14 volts when running. Make sure spark plug wires are good and not shorting to the header. Pull some spark plugs and look to see what you have, if you have evidence of oil burning that may just be from your messed up crankcase ventilation. If you have a lot of black soot then that's probably from a bad tune and running overly rich. After that it's messing with the tune and being sure your MAF, MAP, and o2 sensors are all working properly. Also check your idle air control valve, that may be sticking and causing your high idle.

 

Well did a compression test on cylinder 7 and was getting 220 psi. The exhaust manifold collector had oil all over in it and the plug was also drenched in oil. Valve issue?

 

Also should mention all the other plugs are dry but black. I haven't checked cylinder 8 yet.

 

do the vac test.
I know you can get 1 @ sears or prob pepboys ther cheep but a very good tool to have

this is basicly what you want
http://www.etoolcart.com/deluxevacuu...testerkit.aspx

i looked up a page that explanes how to use it for you.
http://autospeed.com/cms/title_Using...3/article.html