You may have just had what I failed to relate in our phone conversation. You can't help but spill some gunk into the exhaust pipes as you tear down and rebuild. That has to burn off. Two, your rings may not have fully seated at first, so some oil makes it's way past and burns up. This is worst at high manifold vac during prolonged idling.

I'd let it idle for maybe 20min or so, and then blip the throttle and see if you still get a puff of smoke.

fasteddy, I think you are onto something there with the comment about oil passing down the manifold during tear down and the ring not having seated.

I'm in Las Vegas for the remainder of the week so I'll have some time either Thursday or Friday to go see if I can pass emission tests again at DEQ. I have some other projects in mind too like upgrading breaks and getting all my suspension inspected and done.

What's up my people?

• I just wanted to update this thread really quickly.
• Blue Smoke Came Back.
• Practiced Valve Stem Seal replacement on Spare Head.
• Performed the Valve Stem Seal Rope trick.
• Serviced my Lash Adjusters.
• Passed DEQ emission tests.
• Renewed my registration.

Let me briefly tell you how I accomplished all this. So I think that my previous "No Smoking" reply above in this thread was just a fluke. The day after posting about the blue smoke disappearing it came back. After having spoken with both fasteddy and BigBlue, I decided I needed to perform the Valve Stem Seal job after all. I ordered a specialized tool while I was on a business trip and when I came home I realized that performing this job was something I didn't want to mess up.

Thankfully, I had a spare cylinder head that I had not returned as a core yet. This way I could practice how to use this tool before I go and mess anything up on my installed engine. I spent about 2 hours carefully performing the job and documenting it with some photographs. Refer to this thread for details. 1989 V6 - Valve Seal Replacement - Cylinder Head Removed

Now that I had some practice, I decided it was time to perform the "rope trick". I had a couple of challenges and at the end of the job, for some reason, I couldn't turn on the engine again when it was all said and done. However, once I figured out what I did wrong, it was a simple matter of spending just a little more time setting the timing. Refer to these two threads for details: 1989 V6 - Valve Seal Replacement - Rope Trick & 1989 V6 - No Compression

Once I got all that figured out and finished, I got some amazing results. I was able to go to DEQ and pass the emissions test easily and get my registration renewed. I'm excited now to work on some other projects with the rig and put some mileage on it. I'm looking forward to getting together with some of you fellow forum members in the future for some off-road fun.

Overall, I'm really satisfied even through all the challenges. I only had one accident with all the repairs on this rig in the past couple of months so I'm chalking it up to a win. I got a black eye some how while performing the "rope trick". I don't actually know what happened.

I love Chipotle.

Congratulations on passing the emissions test and getting the registration renewed.

John B.