Slow oil drainback

[Mike W.]

My '03 Q is not only going thru lots of oil, more than a quart a thou, but also often smoking on cold starts. But not always. Seems the more/harder it's been run the time before the more likely it is to smoke at start up. I mean clouds of smoke that can probably be seen from space, not just a puff or two. Can take several minutes to clear up. But it runs perfect, idles smooth, pulls strong to 6K RPM, drives nice and as far as I can tell does not smoke when driving.

An odd symptom I'm having that might be related, is it seems the oil is very slow to drain back to the pan after it's been run. A good 10 if not 20 minutes to get most of it back to do a dipstick check, but over an hour to get it up to it's final level. I'm thinking if the oil doesn't drain back properly, I could have oil pooling in the heads and almost pumped into the valve guides. OK, I'm speculating here, but it just doesn't seem like a worn out engine.

Also, I've heard bad valve covers can cause excessive consumption. How complicated a design are they, or are they just a cover?

[VStar650CL]

Bad valve covers can cause it to suck oil out through the PCV system, but they shouldn't cause slow drain back unless they've blocked off the PCV system and sludged the heads. The only thing which can really cause slow drainage is clogged drain ports in the heads (and that can also definitely cause a cloud). Time to bite the bullet and pop the valve covers to see what's in there, and check your whole PCV system to see if it's blocked and letting the crank sludge up.