c3vettelover

My 78 only shows about 78K on the speedo, but I found the car uses a fair amount of oil and is fouling the plugs badly on the passenger side (haven't pulled the drivers side). I put new plugs in when I bought it about 1 year ago and have only got about 2K on them.
What typically causes them to foul so badly?
Should I plan on pulling the heads and having them gone through?
Would this cuase issues with the rest of the engine by reworking the heads only??
I'm not in a position for a full rebuild at this point so I'm looking for options....

Any insight is greatly appreciated....:)

Crash80

Pull your valve covers and look at the valve guide seals. This can cause the issues you describe. They can be replaced with the heads still on the car using compressed air in the cylinders to keep the valves in place while doing the job. If you get them done at the mechanic, it will probably run you 400 bones roughly. If its valve seals, the engine will usually belch a little smake on start up and deccelration. If you have bad rings, it would smoke most of the time I would think. This might help you narrow it down a bit. Best of luck!

zwede

If the engine has never been rebuilt my money is on the vale stem seals. They get hard and brittle with time and finally disintegrate, allowing oil to go down the stems and into the combustion chamber.

Good news is they can be replaced without taking the heads off. A good shop should be able to replace them in about 3 hours or so, or you can do it yourself (it's not that hard).

If you still have oil consumption after the seals are replaced, my next place to look would be the intake gaskets. The gaskets harden with time and the bolts may loose some tension allowing the engine to suck oil out of the lifter valley into the ports.