New To The Site. Blue Smoke Issue.

I was thinking the same thing.

Maybe just new oil rings?

If it’s not fouling plugs, I’d run it. Keep clean oil in it, it'll likely run forever with that good upper cylinder lubrication.

 

Hello from France.
Blue smoke is the sign of used engine and, well, classically it is a good idea to rebuild it. It happens to all cars!
It is just a question of money.
My Cj5 had the engine rebuild by the po and it is nice to have a good engine.
Just calculate how much you want to invest.
Then do your best.
On this forum you'll get the good technical help.

 

As mentioned previously, the rings are likely the fault for all the blue smoke. Many years ago, I had a '62 CJ5 that we all called the "mosquito fogger" for obvious reasons. It left a trail of blue oil smoke everywhere I drove it. At 45mph down the highway, no one ever followed too closely.
When I sold it to a friend, he pulled the engine down for a rebuild, the rings had close to 3/16" end gap, but only about .010 taper on the cylinder walls.
-Donny

 

Thanks for your help!

 

Maybe If I put a bunch of miles I could see if they end up "flaky." I've adjusted the carb every way I can and it's always the same on the plugs. I hear you tho....it runs so good and power is decent and I really don't feel like sinking $2,000 + into the motor.
I really appreciate everyone's time to this issue. I love my '63.

 

Isn't "only .010 taper" way more than what's considered tolerable? BTW, I live in a big city and "mosquito foggers" will get ticketed in a hurry. I was thinking about getting mine back to street legal so the smoking is a roadblock.

 

I'm told excess taper makes the rings work too hard.

 

Oh also....I wonder, to your point, if the high compression numbers are due to build up in the cylinders?

 

The prior owner only owned it a short time and I didn't ask. I have old contact info and think I'll call the guy and inquire.

 

Seems unlikely to me, never seen that much "build up."

 

Yes, that's what I've been told too. Supposedly the flexing of the rings in a crooked bore makes the rings fatigue faster than they would in a straight bore, and shortens life of the rings. An old-fashioned overhaul is new rings, valve grind and new rod bearings. I understand this was pretty common back in the day when engines had forged steel crankshafts and much shorter times between major service than they do today. I'm too young to have a lot of first-hand info about this, but what I can gather an overhaul was what you did between real rebuilds. Pistons are expensive, and they must be replaced when you bore the cylinders. Common procedure was to get another 50% life from the engine between rebuilds by overhauling rather than rebuilding. There is some discussion of this in Dick Datson's books, if you can find them - the million mile Studebaker.

Note you can only put cast iron rings in a crooked bore (no chrome or moly), but that's likely all that's available for the 134.

 

Done all or some of this on old f-heads when I was young, poor and naive. (Still poor and naive.) Really couldn't say how effective it was but it kept me rolling.

The common wisdom back then was that if you increased the compression with a top-end re-hab it could put new stress on the old bearings/journals, but I'd put in .001 undersize rod shells.

In those days 60,000 miles was a healthy lifetime for an engine. And my vehicles were clunkers.

 

People drove a lot less distance too. The interstate highway system did not exist until the Eisenhower administration, 1952-1960, construction authorized in 1956. Long distance travel by car was a lot slower and more tiring than today (instead you'd go cross-country by train, if you would not or could not afford to fly and needed to be there "quickly.")

 

True in some ways I suppose - but on the other hand, my grandparents would make certain trips in their Model A in the same amount of time as we do now... less traffic. Plus they got to meet people, and enjoy small local restaurants, antique shops, and so forth along the way.

 

Out of my ignorance, is the FHead block particularly softer than other iron engine blocks?

 

Not as far as I know - maybe John knows more about this. I thought they were all plain gray iron, common as dirt. Could be the alloy improved, but I would expect the iron to be similar to every other Detroit engine cast around the same time. I know that the casting technology improved a lot since the 30s which led to progressively thinner and lighter block castings. If I had to guess, I'd have thought improved oil quality had a lot to do with longevity. Shorter engine life was not limited to the 134.