Smoking (a lot)

[dblessing]

I recently bought a '66 I1000 with a 250 at an auction. Yesterday was the first day I got it running. It had been garaged for the last 6 months. The owner died and his wife could share very little about it.

It smokes...a lot. It appears to be a blue smoke, but smells gassy to me. It smokes up the entire neighborhood when I start it. Yesterday after letting it run for a while the smoke seemed to dissipate a little, although adding any throttle made it smoke like a chimney again. Today it is smoking like crazy at idle, but I didn't let it warm up much. I'm wondering how much I can smoke up my neighborhood before the neighbors grab their pitchforks. It's pretty bad.

I'm wondering if you all think this much smoke could be caused by a bad PCV, or overfilling the oil. I changed the oil before I even tried to run it and replaced with 5 quarts of fresh oil. However, the dipstick reads that the engine is *way* overfilled. I questioned it, but chalked it up to the previous owner replacing the dipstick with an incorrect one. I don't know how it could be so overfilled otherwise, as 5 quarts seems to be the correct quantity.

I'm trying to determine whether this is a small, cheap issue like overfilling oil, bad PCV, or whether the engine is junk. I can try removing the PCV valve and hose and run it that way for a while, but if that's the problem I don't know how long it will take to burn the oil that's already in the exhaust.

Hoping you all have some first-hand experience with this. Thanks for your insight.

[AZKen]

"First hand experience? Nope. Insight? means intuition. If that is close to guess...I'm in!!!!!!!!!

Well, if he put the wrong stick in it, it's too long and would have to bend when it hits something. Anyway, what is an "I" 1000?
Another reason for high oil on stick is water in oil.
Check the plugs, compression test......broken /warn rings? Valve seats? It may be possible/real lucky, that he/you have the EGR/PCV type system plumbed wrong and some crazy thing is happening.
Any signs that he has removed head or anything? Fresh bolts somewhere? Freshly cleaned bolt heads or new gaskets?
If he overfilled it, it could need to burn off but overfill does not usually mean oil in cylinders, It means oil pump can't pump. damage to rotating parts.
Get the correct dip stick or get a measurement of the correct dip stick.
Take off oil fill cap while running and see how much blow-by comes out. Blow-by is an inside word that us mukanix use. It means smoke.

[sclor]

What transmission are you running? Automatic trannies are notorious for terrible smoke if vacuum modulator goes bad. Allows engine vacuum line to suck transmission fluid into engine. Test is to pull vacuum line on tranny and see if inside shows any sign of tranny fluid.

Hope that helps.
Regards
Steve
New Orleans

[sclor]

What transmission are you running? Automatic trannies are notorious for terrible smoke if vacuum modulator goes bad. Allows engine vacuum line to suck transmission fluid into engine. Test is to pull vacuum line on tranny and see if inside shows any sign of tranny fluid.

Hope that helps.
Regards
Steve
New Orleans

[LEWISMATKIN]

azken, an I-1000 was a 48-state GMC equipped with a chev. inline 6. As to the smoke problem, if the oil was overfull before the change, did it smell like gasoline, having a very thin feel to it, or when draining the oil, it seemed very thin coming out of the oil pan? If so, you may have a leaking fuel pump pouring fuel into the oil pan. that can cause oil to be sucked into the pcv system. Another cause could be the carberator either flooding or the choke plate stuck almost closed. In any case, try not to run the engine very much until the problem is solved, before the cylinders get washed down with this problem. Also, if the truck is quipped with a power-flo (chev. powerglide) a/t, the vacuum modulator diaphram could be ruptured and the engine sucking the fluid out of the transmission. I hope this is of some help in the resolution of this problem.