For all Carb and Injection engines, standard or modified plus non-standard engine transplants. Heads; Blocks; Cooling (including heater issues related to the cooling system); Mounts etc
Forum rules
Hints, tips and guides for repair and modification - the FAQ section on the main website is worth checking first for information relating to common faults and technical help. Useful posts and guides will be added to the FAQ http://www.sciroccoregister.co.uk/scirocco-faq
Hi everyone,
Got my Scirocco back on the road after an 8 year lay up. It's running fine but has the dreaded blue smoke on start up and gear change/deacceleration, which points to hardened valve stem oil seals. My question is, does 'Forte Seal Conditioner' work as a short term solution as a mechanic has suggested to me, or should I spend money now and get them replaced?
For the cost of next to nothing, check the breather in the cam cover.
Take the cam cover off, you will see a metal guaze on one side, on the top side of the cover put a bit of hose on or block the end some how, turn the cam cover over so its upside down (inside facing up) pour some engine degreaser eg "Gunk" in there so it floods the metal gauze, leave for a few hours to soak. Pour the gunk out, take the hose or what ever you blocked the hole with of. Flush with pleanty of clean water from a hose pipe, put the hose in the hole ontop of the cover to flush the crap out. Leave to dry then put the cover back on. (You might need to replace the rocker cover seal once the cam cover has been removed.)
What happens is the gauze gets blocked with crap so the engine can't breathe so pressure build up and oil gets blown out of the exhaust.
This might not make any differnce but always worth a try. I'll find a photo of the metal guaze in a Mk2 golf I had which only had 130,000 miles on the clock and you can see how blocked up they get.
as an interesting aside, vauxhalls of similar vintage have the same sort of gauze filter in the rocker cover breather, and it was something you could unbolt and replace (iirc it was specified for 2 year / 20k service to be replaced)
been toying with modifying a vauxhall filter to fit. or just butchering the gauze out and fitting an oil catch can
Took the rocker cover off today and actually the gauze didn't look too bad, so soaked in Gunk and refitted. I could blow through the gauze with ease afterwards, so I will give the car a run this week and see how it goes, I still may try the 'Forte Seal Conditioner' just as a back up before deciding on the valve stem oil seals themselves (if it isn't any better this week). The car does smell when starting up even tho it's just been tuned and the mixture is spot on with hydrocarbon emission as 189, but I did have the choke out and couldn't really see any blue smoke, so fingers crossed.
