i just recently did patriot heads with upgraded valves on my 98 camaro. ran it for about 300 miles or so. last week i noticed smoke coming out the tail pipes and i had a flashing SES light. i popped the hood and it was smoking out of where the driver valve cover meets the PCV tube, bc i never hooked that up correctly after head install. the smoke stopped coming out of the tail pipes completly, even if i revved it. a friend told me to start it up and pull the oil cap off and check to see if it was puffing smoke out of it. i did that and it puffed smoke. The smoke is white color but is not cloudy or thick, and smells like combustion, not like something burning or coolant.

Today i pulled the driver side plugs, all looked the same except the last one, had oil on it. i did a compression test on the driver side cyls and the first 3 read 190 on the dot. the last one read ZERO!!! is it possible to have zero compression in that cylinder??? i tried the first cyl on the passenger side to make sure the gauge wasnt fucked up and it read 205. i cranked it over and watched the rockers move up and down and all were moving indentical. maybe its a bad seated valve? could it be a bad head gasket??? im trying to think of everything bc i dont want it to be a bad ring. can anyone think of any ideas or has had a similar experiance????? any comments are greatly appreciated. i wanna try everything before i pull it all apart again. is the only way to check for a bad ring to pull the block apart???


PS...... prior to this my car has been running lean according to HP tuners, and i did not tune it after i did the head swap..................

 

If you are reading zero compression that is very bad. Probably the simplest way would be to pull that head and check the piston from the top before you pull the bottom end.

Smoke or pressure coming out of the valve covers (if you have the pcv hooked up) says that all the compression is going into the engine somehow.

 

well, prior to this happening, the pcv was not hooked up and i had an open hole on my driver side valve cover bc my valve covers were from a 99-02, so the pcv tube was pretty much open, that is where the smoke started coming from originally. after that i redid the pdv and sealed that off nice.......

 

ok... u say check the piston from the top, what am i looking for? a hole??

 

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I don see how the hell that is possible unless you have a hole in teh piston. I dont think screwed up rings woudl cause 0 psi. I dont think not havin rings at all woudl even cause that. Wehn you say 0 you mean exactly that 0 right? Not 20 or so? I never heard of even the worst scenario havin 0 PSI. I dunno how but sounds liek a hole inteh piston. GL man


John

 

Did you do the wet or just the dry test? The wet test will tell you if your rings are bad, but if you actually have absolute ZERO you have a hole in the piston crown, valve stuck open, blown head gasket, etc. not just bad rings. You should try the wet test and see if the reading on that one bad cylinder comes up. You're not going to see it come up by a large amount expecially when your starting point is zero. If it stays at zero you can rule out the rings and look for a more critical failure. Bottom line it sounds like the heads are coming back off. At least on that side.

 

Did you check to see if that cylinders pushrods were broken. I've seen where an ls1 had a broken pushrod and in that cylinder there was no compression-it was putting out a ton of blue smoke

 

yea i checked the pushrod, its perfect. when i run the car, there isnt any noises or anything, it runs fine, minus the smoke out of the oil filler........ how do i do the wet test? yes i have zero compression, like the gauge is broken, then i try it on another cyl, and its perfect.........

 

pour a tablespoon or so of oil (straight 30 wt) in the bad cylinder, then do a compression test, if it bulids compression then the rings are shot.....if it fails the first test, try a second one with a little more oil just to make sure....good luck

 

ok and what if it fails the 2nd time??

 

you're definitely fucked

 

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Not teh nice way of saying it but sadly true. I have no clue how you have 2 liek that. There has to be a hole in ya piston. And i dont mean a little one. Tell us how it looks when the head comes off. GL


John

 

i took the head off today............ that last cylinder has a mark on the top part of the cylinder, so i definetly have a bad ring. the mark is about a 1/4 inch down from the deck surface. the mark is circular about 1/4 around the cylinder. it is definetly felt by touching it, it looks like on the way down, the ring busted and marked up the cylinder................. can this cylinder be resleeved? what do i have to do to fix this, how much am i looking at? can i just remove this bad sleeve and put a new one in?? lemme know............. ill post pics of the bad cylinder as soon as i can figure out how to get a camera up in there

update: after i let the pistons sit exposed all day, the cylinder walls dried up a bit and i can see the damage a lot clearer.... Also........... i can now see the piston does have a peice missing, about the thickness of a penny and about 1/8th inch long

 

tttttttttt

 

i know theres more of you out there come on.........................

 

ye they can be resleeved. Id take it to a shop and have them mic it and see if maybe it can be bored over. I really dont know what woudl be cheaper. Getting a new sleeve installed and then jsut slappin teh stock engine together of getting forged pistons adn redoin the whole thing. I knwo that the resleeving aint cheap. GL man.



John

 

you can get a take out block for around 300 to 400 or a complete take out for around 800.I hooked up a local guy with a 6.0 out of a hummer with less than 10000 miles.PM me for details