engine oil leak questions....

[71biggreenk10]

ok, so I've had a whitish greyish colored smoke coming out of the passenger side exaust pipe. I am running a true dual exhaust set up so it's obviously coming from the passenger bank of the engine. It can sometimes be slightly tricky telling if the smoke was white or grey/blue, so I pulled the spark plugs today to see if there was any oil on the plugs or on the threads. Well it's definitely oil, and not water being burned in my engine. The last plug (closest to the firewall) still had oil on it, like dripping off when I pulled that plug. I then pulled the valve cover on the passenger side, and one of my rocker arms had broken, the pushrod is still straight, and the spring/valve still works. If that valve isn't working due to the broken rocker arm, could that cause an oil leak? Or am I still back at square one, and probably have bad piston rings?

[storm9c1]

A cyl will load up with oil (and gas depending on the condition) if it's not firing. Under normal conditions, most of the oil is wiped away from the piston rings, but a little can be left behind and the high cyl temps will burn it off. In your case, it built up because it was not firing. You could also have a bent or damaged valve or seat (beyond what you can physically see) since you really don't know what happened when that rocker went. You could take the easy way out and replace the rocker and see what happens. If the cyl starts working again, I bet the oil loading will go away.

[Wrenchbender Ret]

Storm is correct. Fix the rocker & see what happens. Another thing to look at if it has an automatic trans., is the modulator. If it leaks the engine can pull the fluid out & the vacuum line is generally hooked into the port going to that cylinder.

[71biggreenk10]

I checked the spring and valve, it moves freely, the push rod isn't bent either. I don't know what you mean by modulator, it's got a 700R4 transmission, but I was under the assumption that if it were leaking tranny fluid into the cylinder that it would be a different color, and have a particular smell to it.

[71biggreenk10]

So, the rocker came in....and it went in rather easily. I did a full running lash of all the rockers, just to be safe, because when I took the valve cover off the first time several of them were loose. I was skeptic to believe that an intake valve not opening could cause an excess of oil build up in the cylinder, but I ran the truck for about 20 minutes, and took a drive about 3-4 miles and there was no more smoke pouring out of the tail pipe. Thank you guys for your help.