Ford small block 80s-90s use a positive style seal and are the same stem diameter as ours. Cheap replacement instead of the umbrella type. I second the valve stem seals as a culprit of smoking.

 

Got the car back home and noticed a few wet spots of oil coming from the valve cover passenger side pooling just under the spark plugs, could the source of the oil be seeping into the headers gaskets and burning up in the header causing the oil smoke out the pipes? Im gonna order some new valve cover gaskets and re do them, looks like the mechanic used the old gasket when he was in there, besides those stupid ebroke chrome covers are bent at all the screw holes, will have to get original covers or some M/T or any that are aluminum, so I will save a little money, get what I need and try this before I pull the heads and have the seals replaced, over the winter those projects are gonna happen anyways, I wanna pull the motor and freshen it up, gonna get those nice Mahle pistons from mark for xmas..

Here a pic of the wet spots before I pulled the cover



Here a shot of the cover pulled, one of the spots had some chatter, sorry I don't no the name of that.





The Valve cover gasket looked re used, dont think any adhesive was used, came right off, what is this white grease doing inside the valve cover?




Old gasket re used?

 

My first thought when posting previously was that the intake valley pan was reused. After seeing that the valve cover gaskets were reused, I think the possibility that the intake gasket was reused has risen. A reused valley pan could lead to vacuum leaks and sucking oil into the cylinders.

 

I picked up another 72 block tonight for 350.00, lol a buck a cube, I will get some pics up once I get it on the stand. Can I go to town on the heads with brake clean or do I need to avoid certain areas, I'd like to clean the second set of 7a heads and paint them before I swap them, then the plan will be to send the old set out with the bad seals to be ported and polished and get the bigger valves when the funds permit it. I'm happy it came with a Edelbrock Performer intake manifold, so I will be able to see if he re used the valley pan gasket or not, or sealed it right, not sure how the carb is looking, I will have to post some pics for you guys. 2 bearings were spun on the motor so not sure how the crank is gonna be, have to wait for a tear down hope to have a good block to build on. Bummed the valve covers were gone off it, it had some old holley covers that were sitting on a 455 he was doing up.

 

Just a quick update, my new mechanic got the springs in, and valve seals. No more blue smoke I also had my 3711 intake swapped in, new 600 QF carb and boy does it ever make a big difference from the old tired quadrajet. I also had him re do my front end since I had the parts saved up, new upper and lower BMR tubular control arms, new bilstien shocks, new tie rods, center link, idler arm, pitman arm, swaybar etc. Next week gonna get my alignment done then it will be time to slap on the re pops SSII rims. So this story has a happy ending.

New start up vid:

 

Congrats on finding a better mechanic. The other guy screwd you by re-using gaskets.

 

I agree, and it was a bunch of BS the other mechanic saying the springs were wrong, they were drop in replacements Mark sent me, the valley pan gasket was a mess 2. anyhow all well that ends well.