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Time to revisit this, as I have finally fixed my gas leak. I posted before but it has gotten progressively worse.
Car: 88LX with 227K miles
Symptom: Misfire and Blue smoke.
When: Only happens at first startup after car has sit for a while (at least 8 hours). It starts ok, runs fine on all cylinders, for about 15 - 30 seconds. Then it starts to misfire. If I try to drive away I get a small cloud of blue oil smoke. It then clears up and runs fine. No oil smoke, no misfire. If I just let it idle, it will misfire for a long time, and then blows even more smoke when I hit the throttle. It really only seems to clear up if I rev the engine a bit.
I have adjusted the valve lash, changed the oil and filter, replaced the plugs with NGK copper. Dist cap looks newish as well as wires ( but I have not changed them)
When I pulled the plugs, they looked fine for the most part. no fouling, color looked normal, they werent worn horribly.The plug on the pass side end had a couple of "bumps" on it. Almost looked like two bits of spatter from a arc welder, but they were smoothed into the metal.. cant really describe them real well, and I should have taken a picture but at the time i thought they looked pretty benign.
I initially thought that it was a carb issue, but the smoke has gotten worse, so I am thinking maybe something is sticking? I get some clatter at startup sometimes (not valve noise) but it goes away as soon as the oil gets pumping (like 1 second) and it is pretty inconsistent when that happens. I am still getting over 30mpg in mostly city driving, and power levels seem ok most of the time
I am leaning away from valve seals, because in my experience they dont cause misfires and for the first 30 seconds there is no smoke at all, but am I in the wrong here?
Any thoughts from you master mechanics? I feel like a compression test might not help because it only happens in certain circumstances..
Car: 88LX with 227K miles
Symptom: Misfire and Blue smoke.
When: Only happens at first startup after car has sit for a while (at least 8 hours). It starts ok, runs fine on all cylinders, for about 15 - 30 seconds. Then it starts to misfire. If I try to drive away I get a small cloud of blue oil smoke. It then clears up and runs fine. No oil smoke, no misfire. If I just let it idle, it will misfire for a long time, and then blows even more smoke when I hit the throttle. It really only seems to clear up if I rev the engine a bit.
I have adjusted the valve lash, changed the oil and filter, replaced the plugs with NGK copper. Dist cap looks newish as well as wires ( but I have not changed them)
When I pulled the plugs, they looked fine for the most part. no fouling, color looked normal, they werent worn horribly.The plug on the pass side end had a couple of "bumps" on it. Almost looked like two bits of spatter from a arc welder, but they were smoothed into the metal.. cant really describe them real well, and I should have taken a picture but at the time i thought they looked pretty benign.
I initially thought that it was a carb issue, but the smoke has gotten worse, so I am thinking maybe something is sticking? I get some clatter at startup sometimes (not valve noise) but it goes away as soon as the oil gets pumping (like 1 second) and it is pretty inconsistent when that happens. I am still getting over 30mpg in mostly city driving, and power levels seem ok most of the time
I am leaning away from valve seals, because in my experience they dont cause misfires and for the first 30 seconds there is no smoke at all, but am I in the wrong here?
Any thoughts from you master mechanics? I feel like a compression test might not help because it only happens in certain circumstances..
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