Last weekend at Road America I did one session and came in early after seeing smoke trails coming from the car. Lifted the hood and there was oil all over the top of the engine and the dipstick had been pushed from the tube. Obviously I've got too much pressure in the engine. PCV valve seems to work OK.

Question is, can there be another cause to this other then bad rings/pistons (bottom end)? Reason I ask is that the JPR heads have the ISKY 295D valve springs WITH the dampners. I've been reading that the dampners can break causing the valve seals to get chewed up. Is it possible that the excess pressure is coming through the valve stems and not through the rings? Here's another point to this... These heads came with 1.60" Ferrea exhaust valves which Joe put in for sustained high speed running. BUT... I've also read that the largest valve that can fit in a stock seat is 1.57". I'm 99% sure that the valve seats weren't replaced in my heads so the exhaust valve sits up fairly high in the combustion chamber. Is it possible that the exhaust valve isn't seating very well now and is therefore leaking and from there through the valve seals? I'm not bad mouthing Joe's work either; just wondering if this is possible.

I don't know much about this kind of stuff but the car was fine when the heads went on and this oil issue has generally gotten worse over the summer. At a weekend Sept 14-16 at Putnam Park, I went through 5 quarts of oil but didn't blow out the dipstick. Also, Road America is a very long, high speed track. The engine doesn't make any noises, oil has appeared OK through 3 changes, power seems to be the same. I always associate ring/piston problems with N20 and boost, which my engine has seen none. Also, after parking, on initial start-up the car will blow a big cloud of smoke implying bad valve seals.

Anyway, is it possible the heads are the cause of this? Will a leakdown test be able to differentiate between head and cylinder leakage? Is there anything else that could cause this oil issue? One other piece of info: the oil pressure seemed to up after the head/cam swap. Also, it isn't using any coolant. HELP...

George E. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/confused.gif" />

 

Ive heard alot about 1.6 ex valves on stock seats, and jpr isnt the only one doing it, this condition will cause exessive pumping losses in your engine, making the eng work harder and not scavenge all the exaust from the cyl, second isky's with dapner will break without a doubt and it will rip off the seal and cause oil to leak in the cyl. when this happens combined with the negitive effects of the 1.60 ex valve, your eng will detonate itself to death, that is what is happenig to your eng, ive seen it before. detonation is causing your rings to fail {blowby} and will eventually blow head gaskets and break pistons.

 

Looks like I need to do a compression test and see if any particular cylinders are low. <img border="0" alt="[whiner]" title="" src="graemlins/gr_cry.gif" />

 

on a side note, road america rocks <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="gr_grin.gif" />

http://home.attbi.com/~royboy82/ra.htm

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