blue smoke from breather

[BlueCaprice]

Hello everybody. I have an 88 Caprice 305 that was given to me to knock around in about a month ago. About a week ago I noticed a little bit of blue smoke whisp by when I came to a stop. I didn't think much of it figuring it was a gasket leaking over the manifold somewhere, but 2 days ago it got to the point where I could see a cloud of blue smoke in my mirror. not very thick, but noticable. I opened the hood and found it coming from my breather hose which had disconnected from the intake. (haven't been able to tell if it is coming from the exhaust too while I am driving but I don't see it at Idle) I don't know if this was always like this and I just noticed because the hose came off but I was hoping someone out there might be able to give me an idea what the cause could be. I am not a mechanic but I assume it is something major like a bad valve and/or bad rings. I would attempt to fix this anyway as I am on a limited very budget and can only afford to do something like this myself, but am hoping maybe there is something a little less major that can be cause this. Any Ideas would be really helpful. Thanx everybody for reading :-)

Oh also forgot to mention today I noticed chattering from what sounded to me like a valve/valves. It is happening only occasionally when I hit the gas lightly it is very noticable when it happens.

[burnM]

I think your problem would most likely be valve cover gaskets. Everytime I've had smoke coming from under the hood of a Chevy small block, that's what it was. Gaskets are only a few bucks, and are pretty easy to change. Try fixing the hose you spoke of and change those gaskets, see if it goes away. That chattering you speak of sounds like spark knock. Try using a higher octane fuel next time you fill up. Think about doing a tune-up, check your timing, and change your fuel filter.

Let us know how it turns out...

[BlueCaprice]

Originally Posted by burnM

I think your problem would most likely be valve cover gaskets. Everytime I've had smoke coming from under the hood of a Chevy small block, that's what it was. Gaskets are only a few bucks, and are pretty easy to change. Try fixing the hose you spoke of and change those gaskets, see if it goes away. That chattering you speak of sounds like spark knock. Try using a higher octane fuel next time you fill up. Think about doing a tune-up, check your timing, and change your fuel filter.

Let us know how it turns out...

I thought the same thing at first, but when I remove the breather hose from the intake and give it a little throttle, I can see blue smoke actually coming right out of the breather hose from the valve cover. Now if it were leaky valve cover gaskets, I assumed the smoke would be coming from outside the engine not from inside the valve cover. I can definitley see it is coming out of that hose though. I should mention the car does need a tune up. Today I took off the distributor cap which didn't look to good, cleaned it up with some sand paper along with the rotor and spark plugs (don't want to get tune up until I know what is wrong), and power increased a WHOLE LOT. It had no effect on the smoke though. Am I wrong in my assumption about the valve cover gaskets? It never leaves any oil on the driveway though and also hasn't needed any over the last month anyway. It has stayed full so far. I am going to check when I get home tomorrow and see if it looks dry or not around the gaskets. Thanks for the help. Maybe I could be so lucky, but I doubt it.

[93 CAPRICE LTZ 5.7]

PERFORM A DRY & WET COMPRESSION TEST! The dry test will give you your compression! The wet test (swirt or poor a small amount of oil in the cylinder. this will seal the rings while you perform the test.) If your numbers are about the same as the dry test its your valves. If they go up its the rings!
All that smoke you see is unburned fuel that made it past one or the other into the crankcase,so much in fact that it blew your hose off! this excessive pressure will also start to push oil past yours seals so you will probably notice more oil leaks as you rack up more miles. A ring job may help for awile but I would consider a used or reman engine before you go through that hassel!