I have a 89 4x4 w/a 300 I6 I picked up for hauling wood and debris from my property. I'm fairly sure the odometer has turned over several times.

What I've noticed though is that the air filter is soaked from oil via the PCV valve blow by. I'm seeing white smoke emitted as well. I don't care to do any huge projects and I plan on driving this thing <1000 miles per year.

So far I've replaced the PCV valve with no success. My question is - can I run this without a PCV valve? Or what would be the best option for longevity that doesn't soak my entire engine bay/air filters with oil or is there potentially another cause besides worn out rings on the old i6?

 

Could be a blown head gasket. Relatively inexpensive to replace. I'd do a leakdown test to try to pin it down.

At <1000 mi / yr run without an air cleaner. That's a band aid - not a solution.

 

I had a large amount of blowby on my last engine before I pulled it.
I'm pretty certain it was just worn rings as there were no other issues with it.

Since this is my daily driver, I had oil everywhere. There was so much blowby that if I took it on long trips, the rear differential would be dripping wet from oil from all the oil blowing out of the engine.

To get by, I ran the hose that normally ran to the air cleaner down to a catch can, and then back up to the air cleaner. That way, the heavy oil would collect in the catch can, and the air would continue on to the air cleaner like it should. Every week I would then pour the oil in the catch can back into the crank case. It left my engine nice and dry.

 

White smoke may be head gasket. I had oil collecting in my breather box and coming out of the push rod cover on my '92 4.9L, I changed PCV and nothing changed, friend advised me to check the vacuum tree on the intake and sure enough it was plugged with gunk. Cleaned all the vac. line nipples and it stopped.

 

my last 300 i piped it to the intake of the smog pump, lasted awhile but eventually smog pump went out so i had to gut it and repack bearings. wound up making a draft tube that i hard piped back the frame and dumped close to ground with piece of hose