Some quick head rebuild questions

[Coup D E'Tat]

The car is blowing blue smoke at idle, and you can smell the oil burning while cruising behind my car.

Compression is the same as it's always been, and the car drives/boosts fine on the 14b (60-1 is awaiting a rebuild.) It has some oil buildup around the exhaust manifold and gasket, and it's just generally showing signs of worn stem seals. The strange thing is, the previous owner told me that the head was rebuilt? Should I look for anything in specific?

Quite franky, I don't want to spend a lot of money right now. In the future, a full, forged rebuild would be nice, but I have other things going on that are more important right now.

Now, on to my questions

1) Any particular brand of stem seals better than another? Searching says "No," but I don't want to do this twice.

2) Should the guides or any other part of the head be replaced? Nothing is damaged as far as I know (aside from black exhaust valves on the #3 cylinder that need cleaned.)

3) I've heard that this can be done, using a special tool, with the head on the car. Has anyone done this? I'd rather not pull the head if I didn't have to, and I'm not afraid of a little extra work to get them in with the head on the car.

A leak down test will be done before I do anything (just need to get my hands on one,) but I might as well ask for opinions now.

Thanks,

Jesse

 

[TimG]

A leak down test will be done before I do anything.

Good. Get back to us then. It will tell you your problem.

If it is the stem seals, just replace them with OEM so you don't have to worry about anything later on.

 

[Coup D E'Tat]

Assuming it is the stem seals, can someone answer my questions. Just so I know what (may) lie ahead of me

 

[peregrine]

Assuming it is the stem seals, can someone answer my questions. Just so I know what (may) lie ahead of me

you can do it with the head on the car but it involves filling the cylinders with air and other pain in the ass stuff. its alot easier to pull the head IMHO. besides, you can check your guides to see if those are the problem

 

[defrag010]

Pulling the head to do just stem seals should be your last resort. If you don't have air, you can feed rope through the spark plug hole to keep the valves up. You can check guides too with the head on, as you will want to check them at the stem and not at the valve head.