Oil smoke, oil light, oily block

[Goulash]

Hello all -

So when I bought the car, there was smoke being burned off of the rear exhaust manifold because of a leaky valve cover gasket (it was decrepit), and I didn't think anything of it since that's not too bad of a job. The oil light came on intermittently, but I just assumed that pressure dropped when RPMs dropped due to the leak (the light only flickered a few times, so there's no damage because of that).

Today I finished my upper 60K (new gaskets/seals, plugs and wires, and a few shims that were out of spec), put it back together. It started up with no problem, but after a few minutes it was the same smoke/light thing. I took a closer look, and there's oil on the front of the engine, by the pulleys and whatnot.

So my question is, what else could smoke like that (barring that I rolled the gasket...I don't think I did. I double checked it before I torqued it down)? Could a crank seal smoke like that? Does the engine get that hot? Would low oil pressure cause the light to come on? Would low oil pressure cause an intermittent valve tapping? I appreciate any ideas I can get here....

Thanks - Justin

 

[SolidState]

do a search on rod bearing replacement....

you will be doings your momentarily by the sounds of it.