Got myself a 1990 Eddie Bauer edition that I use seasonally to get up my extremely steep driveway in the snow. I recently noticed the engine is smoking oil after driving up my road and the smoke seems to be coming from the rear of engine and possibly from oil dripping onto the exhaust coming out of manifold. It definitely has a leak or two from the small puddles I find on my driveway and the lower half of most of the engine is coated with leaked oil. Does this sound like a blown head gasket or valve cover?

 

Coming up on the passenger side or driver side?

 

Most likely valve cover gaskets. Especially with the nose-up leaking, pools more oil around the drain-back holes on the top rear of the cylinder heads.

If the valve cover gaskets are the original 1990 ones, be careful when removing them, there were small round flat steel inserts that fit into holes in the gasket at each bolt hole. Two steel inserts per bolt hole. They prevented over-tightening of the valve cover bolts, the valve cover lower lip would bottom-out against the steel inserts before the gasket was smooshed to nothing.

With age, the old gasket no longer reliably holds on to its inserts as you pull it off. Replaced valve cover gaskets on a 1990 302 once, had little steel inserts running around all over the place, figured it out before any got away. Counted them all up as we went along to be sure - 2 inserts for every bolt.

 

Thanks for the advice. I already had to hunt for a bolt that I dropped after trying to reinstall a cleaned AIC valve. This will help keep those inserts from getting lost too.