Thread: Engine experts........need your help again !

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Being that when it comes to engines I don't have the expertise of a lot of you on here, I need some help. It is related to the 455 Olds in my Son Dan's rpu. I'll try to make it as brief as possible. First, here is what we have:

455 Olds
40 over flat top forged pistons
Ga heads off of a 72 442 Olds
66 442 W30 tripower intake
Comp Cam H280 cam

From almost the beginning we have been fighting oil fouling of the front two sparkplugs on the drivers side (# 1 and # 3).........it progressively got worse and we have gone through 48 sparkplugs because we keep changing them out so the car will run for a while. We thought we might have an engine that just wasn't seating yet, so he kept driving it, but oil consumption was high.

We took a compression test and it runs just about 195 across the board, and a leakdown test showed only 10% leakage in every cylinder. So it looks like the rings are seating. I called Mondello because they are Olds experts and a very nice guy named Lynn went way out of his way to help me. He said it was the fact we were using the metal pan type intake gasket and they don't seal well with that W30 intake, so we bought some Mr. Gasket composite ones from him. He said we were sucking oil out of the lifter area and into the ports. Said he sees that one a lot.

When we installed the gaskets he told me to coat them well with black rtv on both sides of the entire gasket, and to use the rubber end seals that come with the kit. We did that and after torquing I noticed the front rubber end seal had a gap under it, and I could get a feeler gauge under it. When we tried removing the intake so we could put some rtv on top of the rubber end seal, we ruined the composite gaskets.

Next day we ordered a set of FelPro gaskets from Summit because we can get those in two days compared to a week from Mondello. FelPro told me on the phone NOT to use sealer on them as it eats up the blue Print Seal portion, just put them on dry. That is what we did, and we put some rtv on top of the rubber end seals to make them seal properly.

The oil fouling and smoking, especially out of the drivers side header got progressively worse, and he used a quart of oil in about 100 miles. Today we pulled the intake because we suspected the oil was sucking from the lifter area and it turns out Lynn at Mondello was right. We can see on the gasket where oil is getting sucked into the bottom of the gasket, especially on the front two ports, but a little on the other ports too. That is our oil problem, so now we have confirmed the problem, but just need the cure.

We bought the heads for this car already done. They have ss valves and all that done to them and were surfaced. My concern is that they might have been surfaced to the point where the intake doesn't fit down into the valley correctly now. It seems like the top of the intake is putting more of an imprint on the gasket than the bottom, as if the angles don't match.

So, after that lengthy explanation, here are my questions:

1) How do we determine if the angles of the intake are the same as the heads, so that the intake will lay flat against the heads?

2) Could thicker head gaskets be used to raise the heads up to correct any surfacing that might have taken material away? (We also had the block decked, so even more matierial is gone)

3) The FelPro gaskets were very thick compared to the Mr. Gasket intake set. Could that thickness make the seating worse, or should it help?

4) Dan is afraid to have his intake milled because it is an almost irreplaceable W30 that they only made 1200 of in 1966. How do you tell if an intake is warped or needs squared up via machining?

Don had this intake on his Olds convertible years ago and he had some vacuum leak issues, but we blamed it on the 425 Olds engine having a different bank angle than the 400's or 455's. Maybe that was not why he had problems, maybe the intake is not flat and sealing properly?

Sorry for writing War and Peace to explain this problem, but it was the only way I knew to lay out everything we have done and seen so far. The problem is the oil getting sucked from under the intake, now we just need to know how to stop it.

Thanks for any suggestions you might have, and here are some pictures we took tonight after removing the intake. The ones in this post are of the drivers side and you can see how the front two are the worst, but they all have some seepage.

Don