I'm getting a heavy blue smoke when starting cold, but it clears up once warmed. Car is about to turn to 90K miles. I searched this site and YouTube for a video that might show me what is involved in changing the seals. In the past it was just a puff, but today was much denser and continuous, however, I'm not seeing any loss of oil on the dipstick. The engine runs silky smooth. Anyone know of a good link on this subject? I changed my own timing belt, but this looks worse if the heads have to be removed. Anyone else had to do this?

 

First off if the cars burning extra oil, that will make for short catalytic converter life. Second if your valve seals are leaking on a car that's been driven fairly regularly. You are most likely looking at new valve guides. Otherwise replacing the seals and not the guides too. Will result in less than satisfactory life and results of new seals.
Note: this isn't me saying you have a valve seal issue. Do your do diligence of diagnosing. One thing that comes to mind for me is a stuck pcv valve. You can also run your bore scope and see what is going on at the back of the valves.

 

I tried cleaning the PCV today before assuming the worse case of valve stem guides or seals. It looked like it was original, but it cleaned up like new with carb cleaner. I would have liked to replace it, but it wasn't in stock locally. Fingers crossed.

 

Maybe try some maxlife oil (or other high mileage oil with seal conditioners) on next oil change.

 

Let's hope, but if the PCV valve was stuck open I think you'd get blue smoke all the time. Unfortunately, my bet would be valve seals gone bad. The smoke clearing after warm-up is pretty much the signature tell-tale sign of that. Hope I'm wrong!!

 

Smoke did not improve with the cleaned PCV so I ordered a new on and installed it. Bummer...still smoking on startup. This car has been meticulously maintained, so I'm disappointed that such a difficult to repair problem has happened. This does not seem to be a documented weakness of this engine. I guess I'll wait until warm weather and see if it improves before doing anything.

 

Now this might be totally out in left field but maybe just check and make sure your spark plugs are tight. At the bottom of the spark plugs they seal a tube that goes through the valve cover and if the plugs are loose oil can build up in the bottom of the tube, you should be able to see oil in the bottom of the tube with a flash light once you remove the ignition coils. Then when you shut the engine off the oil drains into the combustion chamber past the threads of the spark plugs and will cause the blue smoke on start up. This may not be your problem but an easy DIY just to check for piece of mind. The valve seals on these engines are pretty reliable and last a long time so I wouldn't condemn them just yet. Generally the only time the valve seals go bad are when the engine has been over heated and the seals get baked and hardened.
Hope this helps.

 

Okay, one last update. The new PCV did clear up my smoke at startup. It just took a few runs before the residual oil that got sucked in burned off. So after I installed the new PCV and saw smoke on startup, I thought it hadn't worked. But after running the car a few times, it seems to have cleared up. Just wanted to clear that up if anyone else sees smoke, they should replace PCV first and run it a few times to see if it helped.

 

Glad that's all it was.

 

Good to know Poqman. Glad that you got yours cleared up.

So was there a bad smell with the smoke also?

 

I would now take a look at the throttle plate.good chance it's pretty oily from ingesting that oil into the intake.

 

yes there was. The odor clung to my clothes after walking to the rear of the car to witness the smoke and it also clung to my garage if I started the engine before opening the garage door.

 

Good point. I have 90k miles and I'm planning to replace the plugs soon. I'll look at the throttle plate then.

 

 

Boy was this guy wrong. What an idiot!!