What intermittent condition might aggravate oil burning from valve seals?

[NCYankee]

My KA has 226k miles on it, I know the seals are bad cos it smokes pulling away from stops, but not at any other time (at least not noticeably.) I haven't done a recent compression check, though I plan to very soon (also leakdown.)

The amout of smoke can vary A LOT, especially with fresh oil - and it can change within minutes, so it has nothing to do with ambient temp or how hot the engine is. At times it leaves a huge cloud after idling for 15-20 secs, and a couple times recently after idling in a driveway for 2-3 mins I held my breath expecting to back through a choking blue cloud, but there was NO noticeable smoke (and no wind to blow it away.)

So I am wondering if there is something that might be intermittently sticking and causing excess vacuum under the valve cover, causing more oil than usual to collect there at idle? EGR, PCV?

[xX RB Xx]

why dont you just fix the valve stem seals?

[NCYankee]

I am planning to but in the meantime I would like to figure out what else is up.

Working 6 nights a week does not leave me a whole lot of free time to tear my engine apart, so I might not get to it for a few weeks.

[BOOM_STICK]

its just your valve seals, the only thing that will cause you to burn oil is valve seals, head gasket, or rings, the egr and pcv will not change how much it burns. your probably getting different sized smoke clouds because oil isnt consistant, it splashes all over inside the valve cover so sometimes more gets through your seals then other times.

in short just replace your valve seals

[NCYankee]

Ok thanks - it just seemed odd that it started doing this as soon as I changed the oil, the burning had gotten worse when the weather got hot and had been kicking out pretty good clouds on a consistent basis before that.