kishy's 1985 Country Squire

[gadget73]

you can do valve seals without removing the heads. I did on my car, its not difficult technically, just a pain in the back. Having done heads with the block in the car though, let me tell you that is a much bigger annoyance and takes vastly longer. Use the later style seals and it'll be fine even if the valve guides are a bit on the tired side. I've got E7 heads, and used the seals from a circa 2000 Explorer. Thats what were on there when I took it apart. Mine shredded when I changed the cam, bit of extra travel was apparently got them into some varnish on the valve stems and all of the seals disintegrated.

[kishy]

you can do valve seals without removing the heads. I did on my car, its not difficult technically, just a pain in the back. Having done heads with the block in the car though, let me tell you that is a much bigger annoyance and takes vastly longer. Use the later style seals and it'll be fine even if the valve guides are a bit on the tired side. I've got E7 heads, and used the seals from a circa 2000 Explorer. Thats what were on there when I took it apart. Mine shredded when I changed the cam, bit of extra travel was apparently got them into some varnish on the valve stems and all of the seals disintegrated.

My understanding from the engine guy is that you cannot upgrade to the better design of valve seals without also changing the guides, and his opinion is that the umbrella seals are ineffective from day one. But it's possible I misunderstood that and he meant "if you're doing seals you should also do guides" as a matter of best practice or something.

Which is supported by Ford saying that ridiculous figure about 1 quart of loss over a change interval being acceptable even when the cars were new.

Of course, if you've used the positive Viton seals on a head that was assembled originally with the umbrella seals, I'll certainly trust that it's possible, and that seems like it's roughly an afternoon's worth of work, so it's pretty doable even trying to juggle the other stuff on my plate at the moment.

[DerekTheGreat]

If your valve seals/guides were bad you'd foul #8 (..is that only with SEFI heads?) and it would burn oil off idle or after coming off an extended engine braking cycle. The 305 in my Fireturd had bad valve seals, it was a smoke show from every traffic stop or any restart within a few hours. Crosshatch is critical for an oil ring's ability to control oil consumption. Your compression numbers could be showing as OK given there was already oil in the cylinders. Get a better borescope in there and verify. No crosshatch, full rebuild or replacement if it was my circus to manage.

[gadget73]

what I took off were the positive seal type, and I did a like for like replacement. They are E7 heads though, so when they were ported and all those positive seals were put on at that time. I don't know if the valve guides were changed, but they didn't stand out as looking different than other E7 heads I've seen with the springs off.

and yeah afternoon sounds about right. I took the check valve out of a compression tester and used my air compressor to charge the cylinders up. Spring compressor was just one of the usual deals from the parts store, absolutely nothing special about anything. I would advise using some solvent on a paper towel to clean the valve stem before putting the new seal on but thats about all I did. Been together for a number of years at this point and its not eating oil.

[Tiggie]

I also used the newer Explorer type valve seals, but on E6 heads. One valve was a similar type, the other was just this hard shield that didn't cover much. Explorer seals fixed the blue smoke oil problem.

[jaywish]

What does the STP oil treatment purport to do? IIRC the high mileage oils soften gaskets?

[Mainemantom]

It provides a thicker cushion between engine parts. Suppose to cut down engine noise. It has been on the market for many years. It used to come in a can with a pop top. That oil is thick. I have not used it in a few years. It was great to use when I used to buy and flip those worn out $50-$100 specials.
It does cut down on oil consumption.

[jaywish]

So it is Motor Honey as opposed to something like mystery oil which is a more of a cleaner lubricator.

[gadget73]

yep. I used some last engine I assembled. Was running out of assembly lube, so I dipped the roller lifters in it and stuck them in. Probably didn't really need anything for that job but I figured with how thick it was, it wouldn't run out before I got it buttoned up and primed with real oil.

[DerekTheGreat]

I tried most of that type of junk with my 305, none of it worked. If you follow 540rat's blog, you'd see all it does is compromise a given oil's film strength, with the exception of Motor Kote. That stuff does work, but the components in it aren't kind on the soft metals found in your bearings. Restore works too, pending no mechanical damage like a burnt valve. Project Farm has a video on YouTube where he used it with an old Ford tractor he has, before and after results via compression test. Other than that, the stuff is just targeted at making the purchaser feel good about the money they just wasted.

[kishy]

The advertised function that we're after here is reducing oil consumption. How it manages to achieve that, and if that method of attack is effective when valve seals are probably the vast majority of the problem, is not really something I can evaluate at this time.

I put the stuff in, I'll monitor for oil loss, and we'll see if I detect less converter smell in the exhaust. Engines are a dime a dozen. Cats aren't. I'm motivated by trying to keep the car on the road as a driver while not destroying the cats, which were $130 each when I bought them, but a staggering 600-something each today.

On the point about property:
The buyer for my property has fulfilled their conditions (mortgage) and the deal is done. I will be moving into the new place mid-September. My hope is to do very little wrenching in the meantime as moving my garage is a serious project. The plan at present is to move the garage into storage totes which will remain in the garage until the truck is in the driveway, and then it's probably two truckloads between the garage and the house. Using stackable heavy duty totes offers many benefits, like being able to stack to a uniform height and weather resistance in case some end up in the back yard before they can be sorted into the correct spots. Plus I should be able to recoup some of the cost investment by reselling them afterwards.

[jaywish]

The choice of oil may influence any seepage past the seals. I don't know to what degree.

If you think there could possibly be an issue with stuck oil rings you may want to try adding a qt of Marvel If it gets a qt low. It would almost certainly negate any benefit from "high Mileage" additives.
Or wait till you want to change oil then do some cheap oil and a good filter with the Marvel as a kind of a slow cleaning. It will certainly remove some sludge and varnish.

[GM_Guy]

Congrats on the property!

[kishy]

Much appreciated.

Another small thing, but maybe quite relevant to the oil consumption business:
A long time ago now, I had put a new oil filler cap on this, because the mesh screen inside the factory oil cap was somehow missing (the oil cap is the PCV outlet for the crankcase).
Shortly before the NC trip, I noticed that the mesh inside the newer oil cap was disintegrating and basically didn't exist anymore. It was some sort of plastic webbing.
So the car did the NC trip with basically no PCV filter.
After the trip, I dug around in my parts stash and found another new oil cap, but this time with a different filter design inside. Hard to describe. More like a scouring pad as you'd use on your dishes. But this cap doesn't fit the valve cover nicely and falls off, which is how the geyser of oil vapour was observed.

I did some part number cross-referencing and figured out that Motorcraft EC-713-A is the oil filler cap I should be using, but it's gigantic. It's way bigger than the factory cap (like 2-3 times as large) and a fair bit chunkier than the aftermarket caps. Nonetheless, I ordered on NOS on eBay, and I've now figured out why it's so big. It has an entire second chamber separated by baffling inside it, in addition to a wire mesh filter. This cap is clearly designed to address oil consumption via the PCV system, in my opinion.





So I'm attacking this from two angles, both being the low-hanging fruit options: oil and additive choices to try to address entry into the cylinder, and the oil cap to try to address entry into the intake.

I can tell you already though, since the oil change with additive, the cats are way less smelly. There has been a change for sure.

[gadget73]

I ran my car with no screen under the PCV for a couple of months. For some reason I needed to pull the upper intake, and when I did I found it was full of oil. Put the screen in and no oil use since, so you may be on the right path here.

I think that is a larger cap than I have on my car. I've got 1985 Mustang valve covers and use one of the mid 80s PCV valve caps with a gutted PCV for my fresh air inlet. I don't think my cap has any screen in it, just a baffle plate.