WD45 smoke at startup

I'm reading all these posts and I'm wit' Don. Take the Tractor out and run the piss o' of it. Work it hard and seat the rings. That's probably all thats wrong wit' it. If it runs nice and only does it on the first start, I would put it to work for a few hours and then see what it does. Might be fine...
Steve@B&B

I figure rings are already seated. No blowby at all with oil fill cap off and cap on valve cover off while running. Heck I don't know. I'm about burned out on the project now.

I don't see how the full flow could be getting THAT much oil to the head. There's only a 3/16 line feeding the head and that line is split so some of the oil goes to the governor. There should be more than enough space around the pushrods to drain the top end.

Also with that baffle installed, most of the oil I deflected down to the head AND the head is sloped down to the pushrods. The only oil getting to the valves has to run down the arm, then down the valve guide.

The top of the valve guides is almost level with the valve cover surface. You'd have to have the whole head almost overflowing with oil to pool and run down the guides. I don't see that happening with half of a 3/16 oil line.

Did the machine shop ask for valves when they worked on the head? My shop had me give them a valve to make sure they got all the tolerances correct.

You said you were pulling plugs. Can you narrow it down to a certain cylinder? I wouldn't really know how though. It's pretty hard to see in there without a borescope or something

Edited by Allis dave - 06 Feb 2017 at 3:06pm

The head was checked for cracks but I don't guess that really means anything. Machine shop ordered all the parts. The old valves were still in the head when I took it to them. I have all the old valves, springs, seats, guides in a box. I contacted machine shop. They told me to let them know what I find when I remove valve cover. I'll crank it and look down valve cover to see how much oil is moving around. After that I'll take valve cover off and look at everything. Then I'll crank it with cover off. More than likely I won't have anymore info until Saturday. I don't feel like doing much after I get off work during the week. Thanks for all the help guys. I'm trying not to lose my mind over here lol. This thing has been a project for almost 10 months now messing with it every weekend.

Edited by 79fordblake - 06 Feb 2017 at 4:52pm

I completely rebuilt my WD engine just the way you did, spent about $3500. No rocker arm baffle, no valve seals, everything tight and square, full flow conversion, and I've never so much as seen a single puff of smoke since it was rebuilt. Something was done wrong, either an incorrect part or clearance. Sometimes you have to build and check them yourself twice to catch the little things, and it could be a very little thing causing it. Keep at it.

Yup about 3.5 gallons an hour and haying mine uses every bit of that. But I haven't seen a tractor with the same hp rating that can do as much work either.

There's a good thought.

OK.

Just for the heck of it I'll check the air cleaner oil. I took it all apart and cleaned and refilled cup before I started it. I'll also take a look at valve guides when I get valve cover off.

They had knurled guides even when new?

A-C intake guides always had a spirol pattern inside them. They also had a tee-pee shaped top (not flat top) for oil to run off the guide. Also a correct pressed in height.

79fordblake wrote: They had knurled guides even when new?

Yes

It's only showing oil smoke on start up. And no like I said the oil level has not went down yet. I doubt burning a little oil at start up is going to lower the level any that is noticeable for awhile. It's still on the full mark right now.

Id say the guides probably are not quite correct for this application.   Now its a matter of do you want to tough it out and fix it or live with it as its not gonna be a huge isssue, but will always be there.   You could put some valve stems seals on and improve it alot, or replace the guides with different ones-problem is getting the correct ones.  Back in the day when we worked on a lot of these engines we always put valve stems seals on the intake valves.  We had a special tool to cut the guide to accept positive valve stem seals-worked real good and the reason for doing so was to eliminated blue smoke at start up.   Good luck Blake.

Cranked the tractor this morning. Blue smoke out the exhaust. Used it 3hrs mowing today. Ran great and not one puff of blue smoke the whole time. Turned it off when I got done and let it set about 15 minutes. Cranked it up....blue smoke out the exhaust.....