Repercussions of delaying replacing valve seals please advise

[GSLENK]

Got some blue smoke puffs, and exhaust smells like burnt popcorn (burning oil). After car is above 190* on warm-up it starts blue smoking. Then I get a nice little puff on the first takeoff. It is clear and not smelly after taking off until about 20 seconds after coming to a stop and idling, then goes away after moving again. (sounds like seals right?). This has been going on for about 2 weeks now. I drive ~100 miles a week.

It is colder than a witches tit out. So....I am wondering how long I can put this off and what will be the consequences of doing so? This is a BIG semester for me, and my last one so I am limited to earning/spending like $60/week. (yes these did not pick a better time to start leaking).

I read that this could damage the valve/seat sealing surface if left too long. So... is it worth it to pony up $80 for the tool, $35 for the gasket (VC), some other change for misc stuff and knock it out over the weekend?

Or should I let it rock while I buy a head core, machine and rebuild it to stock-ish specs and swap it out in a month or 2 tops? JAM is right down the street... =]

 

[Dxc545]

Yup valve stem seals. I ran a couple months like that too last year. The only negative I could see happening is when the oil leaks into the manifold and is burned it could eventually foul your o2 sensor. I mean if it gets real bad it might make a mess of your cat if you still have one

 

[Mello]

Mine leak so I switched to heavier oil & it helped the blue smoke puffs a lot. Smoked bad enough I couldn't make it through emission without ex-fixating the tech. For a while things look normal meaning I can procrastinate so more. This was almost 10K miles & 2 emissions ago.

 

[GSLENK]

Ok ill pick up some vr1 50w20 and go from there. Probably do a compression check later to verify I did not degrade any sealing surfaces. No more emissions or inspection for me. I went historic last year. (no cat either, or any other emissions crap.

 

[BogusSVO]

Long term you can build up gunk on the back of the intake valve and hurt performance.

 

[1990TSIAWDTALON]

We ran my sons car one season (probably 30-40 passes) on the 1/4 mile last year. It won't get any better and we found out that, while installing new seals, the guides needed replaced so the new seals lasted about two weeks to a month and then started smoking again from wiggling around in the guides so I would check the guide play and see how bad it is if you get a chance. Just our experience. Hope it helps you. We didn't hurt the motor just looked like a mosquito fogger at the track which was embarassing. Also you may need a special valve spring compressor to do it on the car. It took him a few hours to do all 16 but really only the exhaust side had bad guides. Good luck.

 

[GSLENK]

Long term you can build up gunk on the back of the intake valve and hurt performance.

How bad is the gunk, will it break down with seafoam or some other voodoo or is a rebuild/disassembly mandatory at that point?

I really dont think the guides are toast. This motor has age not miles. 23 years old and like 40k miles or so. I suspect that it is reasonable from old age that the seals are fried as "rubber" does age.

 

[BogusSVO]

At 40k miles I doubt there is much, but if sucking oil past the seal now, in another 40k miles you would have a fair bit.