It's not rich. Trust me, this is oil smoke.

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'87 Fiero GT: Low, Sleek, Fast, and Loud
'90 Pontiac 6000 SE AWD: None of the Above

Luck, Fate and Destiny are words used by those who lack the courage to define their own future

I found the culprit anyway. At the suggestion of the Total Seal tech I pulled the intake. There was oil on the backs of all the closed intake valves.

I emailed Allen Cline about it. He said that the Cadillac valve stem seals are the best made. Anywhere. Period. However, oil can seep around the OD of the spring seat and the OD of the valve guide and get into the cylinder. He's given me a procedure to use to correct this issue. When I do this (possibly later this week), I will post it here along with pictures and a how-to.

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'87 Fiero GT: Low, Sleek, Fast, and Loud
'90 Pontiac 6000 SE AWD: None of the Above

We'll see how things turn out.

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'87 Fiero GT: Low, Sleek, Fast, and Loud
'90 Pontiac 6000 SE AWD: None of the Above

I spent $1.63 on materials to make a tool that replaces half a dozen GM specialty tools to remove the retainers/keepers... but damned if I can't get the stem seals/spring seats to budge.

They move a tiny bit if I touch the side of the spring seat with a tool, but I haven't been able to find/make a tool that can apply any force there. There are holes in the sides of the seals that can be hooked into, but whether I try a hook in one side, the other side, or BOTH, the dam seal won't give a lick.

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Punch the gas and feel the back step sideways; rip off a powershift and hear the tires punished by torque; downshift, lift off and feel the engine braking that only comes from big cubes, listen to the pop and gurgle. Know that you are driving an American V8. There are finer engines made, but none that are this cool.

The spring seat part of the stem seal/spring seat pulled off of most of them, leaving the stem seal, which was still a bit onery.

The stock springs are SOO easy to compress compared to the CHRF springs... but then, that's the point, isn't it?

Dropped an exhaust valve into a cylinder, but was able to fish it back out so I didn't have to take that head off.

Got some pics... will post later.

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Punch the gas and feel the back step sideways; rip off a powershift and hear the tires punished by torque; downshift, lift off and feel the engine braking that only comes from big cubes, listen to the pop and gurgle. Know that you are driving an American V8. There are finer engines made, but none that are this cool.

Cylinder head with no cams:

This is trying to show the difference between intake and exhaust valve angles:

Close up of the lifter bore:

The oil for the lifter comes in the opening in the bore of the lifter, then runs down the outside of the spring and drains back to the pan. The galleries that feed the lifters are completely separate from the cam bearing oil path. The camshafts are hollow. Oil is supplied at the front cam bearing and goes back through the cams and out through holes in the cam bearing journals to lube the cam bearing surfaces, which are native cylinder head material. There are no cam bearing inserts.

There's a GM tool that is a sleeve to drop into the lifter bores to protect them while working with valve springs and such. My dad and I didn't have that, so we made one out of polyethylene:

The OD of the sleeve is 1.290 +0.000 -0.010, the ID is 1.190 +0.000 -0.020. Yes, that's a 50 thou wall thickness. Since the CHRF retainers have a larger OD than the stock retainers, the GM tool probably wouldn't have worked with them.

This is the stock spring and retainer vs the CHRF spring and retainer.

The stock springs are 53 lbs on the seat and 109 lbs over the nose with the factory cams. That's the L37 springs. The LD8 springs are slightly weaker. The CHRF springs are 100 lbs on the seat and 180 over the nose on the factory cams. The factory retainer weighs 13 grams. The CHRF retainer weighs 18 grams. The lifter weighs 68 grams. Allen Cline told me that there's a Kawasaki solid lifter that will work. I'll research that once I get the car on the road.
The CHRF springs look like a spring and retainer from something else that was the right size and rate to work. If he had wound custom springs, I would have thought he'd have them tapered or behived to use stock retainers or something even smaller. Keeping the 13 gram factory retainer, and changing over to a lighter solid lifter along with a tapered vavle spring would have been an outstanding valvetrain setup. The CHRF springs are still very good, though.

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Punch the gas and feel the back step sideways; rip off a powershift and hear the tires punished by torque; downshift, lift off and feel the engine braking that only comes from big cubes, listen to the pop and gurgle. Know that you are driving an American V8. There are finer engines made, but none that are this cool.

I reinstalled it as it was... what fiddling were you thinking of?

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Punch the gas and feel the back step sideways; rip off a powershift and hear the tires punished by torque; downshift, lift off and feel the engine braking that only comes from big cubes, listen to the pop and gurgle. Know that you are driving an American V8. There are finer engines made, but none that are this cool.

Luck, Fate and Destiny are words used by those who lack the courage to define their own future