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mdaniel83 · Guest

two questions, if i open my air filter and the box(not the filter) has an oil or gas? it's kinda brownish and smells like gas...what could be the problem? and the other one if there's to much oil, would the exhaust smoke like crazy and spitting some watery dark drops?

jamez · Guest

dude are you high?

Roger Hall · Guest

Your not gonna be happy!!!!!!

There is a hose that goes into your air box and it takes fumes from the crankase and burns them with the air and gas. Shouldn't be much more than a slight flim of oil in the airbox. Water from the tial pipe is also a bad sign. Perform a vacum test, compression test, and a leekdown test.

You will probably find that your head gasket has failed.

mdaniel83 · Guest

maybe after smelling the fumes for the whole day of working on the car

mdaniel83 · Guest

Roger do u think its a head gasket or could it be a valve cover gasket?

-nick · Guest

woah! you guys always assume the worst! on a cold day almost any car will get a little brown water spouting out the tailpipe. it's just condensation that picks up some of the burned up carbon from the exhaust pipes. if it's anything else it wouldn't be in liquid form, it would be either a blue smelly smoke from burning oil or white smelly smoke from burning antifreeze.

on my early cars (and i think all years) the airbox has a hose going to it from the crankcase breather. this is where all the oily sludge comes from. i've got mine just venting into the air (shhh!) and plugged up the hole on the airbox. no oily air plate lid since. i think a little fuel can seep down from the cold start valve and mix with the oil where it stays put.

on the positive side, you know that stupid crankcase filter that you can only replace by pulling it out from the inside of the engine is clean.

-nick

924RACR · Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2002 10:51 pm Post subject:

Yeah, I'd suspect a head gasket. Just oil would not be brown, but when you mix in a little coolant...

How's it running? Hot?

_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype

mdaniel83 · Guest

is changing a head gasket is pain in the ass??? is it a lot of work or is it pretty simple?

wdb · Guest

before you go to the trouble of replacing yur head gasket,get a good torque wrench(parts stores will ussually loan them out for free but require a deposit) and retorque your head bolts,and see if that fixes the problem. Haynes says head bolts should be retorqued every 5000 miles. If you do replace the head gasket,clean the threads in the block with thread tap so you get an accurate reading on the torque .

-nick · Guest

oops, i should really read an entire post before *trying* to help out. i missed the part about 'smoke like crazy'. i'll follow the majority and vote for the headgasket too.

it's not too bad to change if it comes to that. the biggest pita is going to be unbolting those frozen exhaust nuts to separate the downpipe from the cast iron manifold. getting to all the dizzy bolts requires a little squeezing too. when you retorque be sure to first back off the bolt a little and then retorque it down. otherwise the static friction will give you a false torque reading.

sorry for misleading...
-nick

Roger Hall · Guest

i never meet a head gasket that was easy to replace

wdb · Guest

I to should read a little better,if there is too much oil in your engine it will send out clouds of billowing smoke,the pcv system will suck it up when the valve opens(above a certain RPM) if there is almost too much,going around a bend will cause the oil to slosh over to the pcv inlet and get sucked up.

Joes924 · Guest

How does it run.. did you put to much oil in

I had that sludge prob. 1 time when i 1st bought the car and it was from a little over fill on the oil side make sure you know the cause before you take it apart.

924RACR · Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2002 10:44 pm Post subject:

No, wait, if you're having a problem with sludge build-up, you need to drain it, scrape out all the old varnish (some guys save this stuff, but I just throw it away), and soak the bowl overnight in some harsh solvents, like lighter fluid, to loosen up the residue. You might need a better scrub brush too, if it's building up.

Then just give it a good wash and you should be all set to go... it could be you're packing it too tight, or maybe letting it run low on water...

...OH, wait, you're talking about the car?!? Oh, yeah, dude, definite headgasket...

I was gonna say, I've never seen a bowl with a headgasket, they usually use o-rings if anything... LOL

Duuuuude...

Hey, don't forget to get a tap and, while the head's off the block, clean out all bolt and stud holes into the block - particularly the intake and exhaust mounting. As suggested, it's a worthwhile idea to replace all exhaust studs and nuts. I found plenty of metric HW at NAPA, but Your Monkey May Vibrate...

_________________
Vaughan Scott
Webmeister
'79 924 #77 SCCA H Prod racecar
'82 931 Plat. Silver
#25 Hidari Firefly P2 sports prototype