428 still smoking. Any ideas?

Hey y'all. Still having oil control problems in my new 428. Here's a rundown for those who haven't heard my moaning.

Got new 428 built. Specs:

-428 "C" block, bored to 4.155" with torque plates. Block half-filled with Hard-Blok. Main studs. Studs on cylinder heads.

-J&E pistons. 10.5:1

-CJ rods with ARP bolts.

-428 crank 0.010/0.010"

-rotating assembly balanced

-Comp Cams solid flat tappet cam with 270/276 degrees @ 0.20", 240/246 @ 0.050", .598/.608" lift, 108 lobe separation angle, 104 intake centerline
Using Crower "cool face" dumbbell solid lifters. oil passages to lifters not plugged.

-Ported Ebok #6005 CJ heads with 2.09/1.66" Ferrea valves. Flows 303/206 cfm @0.600".

-Ported Blue Thunder single 4 bbl intake. Using custom cut rubber intake gasket, not Printoseals.

-850 Holley double pumper with 76/82 jets, 3.5" power valves. 1/2" divided spacer. 4" K&N element

-2" Crites headers. 3" pipes with x-pipe, 2 chamber Flowmasters and turndowns

-7 qt. milodon oil pan with windage tray. Melling High volume oil pump. oil drain back holes massaged. oil passages at pump/filter enlarged smoothed out. Main bearing/oil passage misalignment fixed.

-Harland Sharp rocker shafts and rockers Crane 99895 valve springs (~420 lbs open). Dove rocker supports. Titanium retainers. Teflon seals.

Here's the deal. I broke the engine in in the car for about 30 minutes. It was smoking lightly. Drove to muffler shop and got headers hooked up, about 60 mile round trip. Drove it home. By now had about 100 miles and very little smoke out the tail pipes. Next morning I drove to work and it was missing pretty bad. Found the two rear plugs were badly fouled. The rest of the plugs looked okay. Checked the oil and it was over a quart down.

Did a cranking compression check. Got 185-195 on the front 6 cylinders. Got about 215 on both back cylinders. Try a leakdown test. Got 3-4% on all cylinders.

I checked the intake bolts and 3 of the rear ones were at less than 10 lb/ft of torque so I thought maybe they had backed out and the intake gasket was leaking. Took the intake off and could find no signs of oil leakage past the gasket. Intake ports look pretty clean. Took a couple of header tubes off (#4 and #1) and looked into the exhaust ports. Exhaust ports look very sooty and looks like there is oil around valve guides on interior side of cylinder head on both cylinder #4 and #1. Looks like more on #4, though.

At this point I can find nothing mechanically wrong with the motor. I am thinking maybe my valve covers are flooding and the two rear valve seals are getting submerged and leaking into the cylinders and fouling the rear plugs. Also, I cosidered that I over-filled the motor with oil. I put in 8 quarts (7 + 1 for the filter). Maybe the rear of the oil pan is getting oil up into the crankshaft above the windage tray and the crank is whipping the oil up onto the bottom of the pistons and overwhelming the rings.

So I put in some 0.090" restrictors to the rockers, re-filled the motor with a total of 6 quarts oil and reassembled it.

It fired right up with little or no smoke. I drove it about three miles easy and still little or no smoke. On the way home drove about 5 miles dipping into the throttle and letting off. By the time I got home it was smoking heavily again.

Next day drove it about 35 miles on the highway pretty easy. Very little smoke. Within about 2 miles of home I got on it hard a couple of times. When I came up to stoplights it would start smoking heavily again. Car is running fine and will fry the tires at a 35 mph roll, pulls past 6 grand easily and has no missing. Runs about 180 degrees. Has lots of oil pressure: 80 lbs at idle cold, 30 psi at idle hot. about 70 psi cruising down the highway at 3000 rpm.


Any ideas what the deal is? I don't think it's the rings still breaking in 'cause the decreased to almost nothing then it started smoking allot like something changed for the worse.

It could be valve stem seals, but it'd be weird that the back two cylinders had the seals fail at the same time.

It could be the intake gasket leaking, but again it's weird that the rear cylinders on both banks (#$ and #8) would leak at the same time. Plus I could find no signs of leakage at the gaskets. I also checked torque on the cyliner heads and none of those had backed off.

Sorry for writing a book. Any ideas are welcome. I don't want to pull the motor again, but I will if I have to.

Thanks,

Paul