- Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:11 pm
#38752
You can pull off the valvecover, see what color is on the hardware underneath.
If it's clean like there has been just water in it in stead of oil... then it's almost like a brand new engine.
The darker it get's, the lesser it is.
Brown would be an acceptable color, darkish brown or black... that's bad.
If you can, take a look at the valveseals, they should be in good condition and not dried out or loose... it'll cause a lot of oil burning wich is fairly easy to fix.
Also, look at the sparkplugs... if they're white (to lean) or black (to rich), not good either.
In the end; white means detonation, black means burning oil.
Also take a look into the exhaust ports... if they're all clogged up with coal, it means it could have that crap on the inside as well...
Wich causes exhaustvalves to close improperly, and maybe there is something on the inside.
Coal will heat up and glow, causing detonation.
As with most things, it's not
always saying everything, and not always the thing I said it was, but it does give you an indication of what you may have there when they add up.
When I'd go out to buy an engine, I look at the outside (is it clean without being cleaned, color and state of sparkplugs, color of everything under the valvecover, and the amount of soot in the exhaustports.
you can do that yourself if you have a compression tester.
