Steam coming from valve cover.

[Justin86]

I put on one of those valve cover breathers a couple of days ago. Just yesterday I noticed some steam of the result of something burning coming out of the valve cover breather filter. Is it suppose to do this or not.

[mindlos]

Some people have noticed this before when its cold outside. Its normal combustion moisture. The good thing is it doesnt stay in your oil and make it acidic when mixing with other by products of combustion. The breather pipe into the intake does a better job though.

[Justin86]

Well it is normally 90 degs outside now. If it is normall then it should do it all the time. It only started doing it the second day I had it on. Also I would just do the pipe but I still have my carb valve cover on and I don't want to make a fitting for the pipe on my CAI.

[Justin86]

Holy shit I figured out where the steam is coming from. It is oil burning and it is venting out the filter some how. Then yesterday oil started to leak out the filter and all over my intake manifold and then all over the fucking place. Why is the oil coming out of the valve cover?

[A20A1]

Maybe you have too much gas build up...
BTW did you check your oil level... I know I had my oil changed at good year once and they said my car was ready and they didn't put any oil in... I drove home and smoke was coming out of my valve cover... but that was back in 98... i didn't know much about the accord back then... poor baby.

[mindlos]

If your oil level is okay I would say it is excessive blowby kickin the oil out of the valve cover. It will happen when the engine is under heavy load like at WOT going uphill on some cars.

Do a couple tests. 1) You should take it easy on the car and see if it happens. 2) Then take it uphill and lug it and see if it happens. Normal driving should not produce excessive blowby but I wouldnt be suprised if stressing the engine kicks out some oil on older cars.

Ultimately, if you do a compression test and levels are okay with all cylinders about even I wouldnt worry too much about it. If the results of a compression test are not good it will involve rebuilding something. That would be the worst case scenario.

[Justin86]

I check the oil and it was low. I had to put 2 quarts in it to get it up. So I have lost around 2 quarts of oil in maybe 3hrs of driving.
The oil comes out at idle so under a load it would be ugly under my hood. I will try the compression but it should be ok since the head and block were left unchange when I did the EFI swap.
What do you mean by too much gas build up?

[Not like a rock]

My car is doing the same thing because ( I think ) there is stuff built up on the piston rings (I just got it a couple of weeks ago so I don't know for sure). But I don't have a CAI. Anyway, check your PCV valve (I posted about this in the EFI Tech forum). Also, check wherever the hose from the valve cover used to go before you got the breather. If it went back to your air filter piping, check the filter for residue or (in my case) pools of oil in the casing.

[A20A1]

2 quarts in 3 hours... I doubt that all came out the valve cover...

[pinang]

Do a compression test. I think it might be bad rings. this will cause alot of blowby which comes out of every hole that has to do with oil. Do you notice any smoke from your tail pipe? what color is it? if its white, its problably oil also. Good idicator of bad rings

[Justin86]

I would have to say that 99% of the oil came out of the valve cover breather. I'm trying to check other places but it is hard to see some areas.

[Justin86]

Originally posted by pinang
Do a compression test. I think it might be bad rings. this will cause alot of blowby which comes out of every hole that has to do with oil. Do you notice any smoke from your tail pipe? what color is it? if its white, its problably oil also. Good idicator of bad rings

I will try that but I doubt that it is the compression. Everthing ran fine until the 2nd day I had the car running after I finished the EFI swap. Then it started leaking oil and got worse every minute.

[Justin86]

Ok I checked the compression and I have 155/ 52/ 145/ 145 PSI. So I'm coing to take the head back off and take a look at the valves.

[Justin86]

So I did a couple of test and found out that my new head gasket is bad. Some how it got damaged when I was putting on the head. But the gasket cracked and the compression was leaving the #3 cylinder and going out the oil return lines, then forcing oil out the valve cover the fastest way possible.
So $20 for a new gasket and about an hour fix.

[mindlos]

That's sucks major ass dude. At least it seems like you are good with this work since you say it will take you about an hour. Good luck.

[MattsAccord]

yea it is not hte head gasket. I took it off yesturday and it was fine, but I did figure it out. The PVC valve was bend and that was causing the blow by. The hose will be in Tuesday so I will report on it when I get it on. Whoops sorry about the name mix up. I'm over at Matt's right now and I forgot to log out of his name.