Occasional Puffs of blue smoke

[raaksha]

Loving my car, apart from the annoying heat shield rattle that I'm gettin fixed later this week, but I'm a tad bit worried about occasionally burning oil. I'm not an expert on car engines, currently learning as much as I can. I noticed from making my weekly 3 hour drive that I would lose about a half a quart of oil each way. Started paying a bit more attention, and noticed that if I leave my car idling in neutral for a long period, the next time I rev my engine I get a puff of blue smoke. I'm pretty sure somethings wrong with a ring, but do you guys have any suggestions on exactly what is wrong and how i can fix it?

[Hijacker]

more than likely it's a valve seat. my old DSM did that, and it was caused by a worn valve seat.

here's a kicker for you. my 240 will puff on the first rev on a cold morning. best guess is that the seals retract just ever so slightly over night and let a few drops past, which blows out as blue smoke on start up

[raaksha]

Its not a small cloud though, rather large cloud. Engine still runs fine, just annoying to have to put a quart of oil in it every week. Forgot to mention I just broke 112k miles, been putting a large amount of miles on it as it was just under 100k when I got it in march.

Also the previous owner didn't treat the car nearly as well as she talked about it, there was a TON of cigarrete ashes under the ashtray, had been driving without an air filter for who knows how long and the fuel filter had never been replaced.

[Nismo_Freak]

It's turbo time!

[s13EastTN]

Frankly, I would goto autozone and buy some lucas oil stabalizer and put a quart of that stuff in there(synthetic stuff if you can afford $14) and that might help your smoking problems frankly. I was extremely suprised at how much it fixed the smoking problems on both my 240 and my civic, which still haven't smoked 3-4 months after I put that stuff in there(even after I changed the oil). So maybe lucas might be the stuff you need. Its only like $6 or so and couldn't hurt eh?

[raaksha]

Will try that tomorrow. If all I have to do is spend 14 bucks and it will get rid of the puffs of smoke, I'll be a happy person.

[s13EastTN]

14 is for the synthetic, 6-7 is for the regular, regular works fine and it this thick as dang tar. You can tell just by looking at it plop in that it will do a good job of sealing and such.

[raaksha]

No advantage from usin the synthetic? My car is sort of like my second girlfriend, only two people/things I feel no guilt about spending money on hehe. Sort of off topic, but I just swapped out some 10 dollar light bulbs off of ebay, I think its one of the best deals I've ever gotten in my life, love the whiter look Very well spend 10 bucks for me.

[raaksha]

I wanna go much bigger than just a turbo, I just have a lot to learn before I do anything. I should have the funds to back up my plans in not too long as well, in fact, probally will have money before I have the knowledge.

[s13EastTN]

I haven't tried the synthetic, but if the regular stuff did the trick, why poor more for the same thing. Now if you are changing your oil and adding lucas then synthetic isn't a bad idea. It's all up to you however.

[raaksha]

I used a similar product to what you mentioned, as well as some sea foam to clean my injectors, and at the very least, there is much less smoke. Thanks for the advice, it seams to have worked. On a side note, the sea foam is such a huge difference my 240 feels like a completely different car.

[C-Kwik]

I'd be skeptikal of anything that thickens the oil. Even if it mixes with the oil well, it would change the overall viscosity. While this is not going to kill your motor in that of itself, yould be doing something similar to just using a heavier weight oil.

As far as the proiblem itself, I'd suspect the valve stem seals. If it smokes mostly after idling or decelerating the motor for a long period of time(slowly stopping while in gear), this is most likely the cause since the intake manifold will see high vacuum and if the seals are bad, it will suck some oil past the seals. Then as you accelerate a large amount of what oil was drawn into the intake mani gets pulled into the combustion chamber burned and spewed out the exhaust.