smoke after high rev-ing.

[bigpappy]

Here's one that is puzzling me. A few weeks ago, I had a good amount of smoke appearing from between the firewall and the back of the engine. Since my car just hit 180,000, I thought I'd replace the valve cover gaskets, intake manifold gaskets while I did the valve lash. (Barely needed one, glad to say.) I noticed more oil in the plug wells than when I changed the plugs, so I used the empty windex tube to squirt the oil out into the empty windex bottle.

After I finished with the re-assembly, I noticed that after my test drive, there was still a good amount of smoke. I checked all the fluids, everything was fine. I thought there might be some residual fluid burning off from the previous problem. So, I ran her pretty hard, and there was less smoke.
As it stands now, the harder I push it, the more smoke I'm seeing. If I drive like a normal person in a SLO, I can't smell anything burning, or see any smoke. However, if I drive it like a SHO, she smokes. Could there be that much residual?
From underneath the car, I can't see anything that would make it smoke like that. It sounds like it's some fluid dripping on the exhaust, causing it to smoke. But, I'm not losing any. Could it be refrigerant? Does anyone know what that smells like when it burns?
Thanks for any help you may provide.

Also - how much money have we raised? Does anyone know? And why weren't the details posted on the site?

John
I realize it's a bit vague, but can anyone provide some further insight on this?

<small>[ September 11, 2003, 09:27 PM: Message edited by: bigpappy ]</small>

 

[SHO_Driver]

Could your rear valve cover be leaking? Not uncommon for the gasket to shift out during reassembly.

 

[sdpatt]

Before you can fix the leak you must first find it. Get under there and look for the source. It could still be the rear valve cover seal or the oil pressure sender, the oil lever sender, one of the rear bank camshaft seals or even the power steering pump or power steering high pressure hose. If you see oil dripping from the lower timiong belt cover, the leak could be the front main crankshaft seal. It would have been prudent to locate the source before taknig the engine apart. It does sound as if you needed to replace the valve cover seals though due to the oil in the plug wells.