I had a small engine fire in the old Bronco last night. Best I can tell it was caused by an oil leak from the valve cover gasket running down and pooling on an exhaust pipe. The oil leak came on instantly, I had no oil drips in the driveway or anything. Good thing the San Diego 4 wheel drive club requires you to carry a fire extinguisher!!
The fire damage appears to be minimal (so far). It was on the passenger side just below the heater box. I lost a couple of vacuum lines and wires.

Here's where I need advice: (1982 w/ 351W and Holley 2 barrel)
1. I cleaned up the engine and located a huge oil leak on the driver's side valve cover.
2. When I applied some rpms to the engine I got oil coming out of the dipstick (I'm thinking blowby)
3. Compression test shows me approx 150psi on all cyl except #8 which is 0.

My current plan is to pull the valve cover in the morning and check out the valves. Logic tells me that the exhaust valve could be stuck or I have a bad oil ring.
What else should I be looking for? Are there any symptoms I need to check out before I pull the heads and such?

Any advice, thoughts, or sympathy would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Rob

 

Sorry bout your missfortion bro.
Maybe check for blown head gasket, you said most everything else I can think of.
Good luck, keep us posted on what you find.

 

Could even be a hole in the piston. Hope It's not, Keep us posted.

 

Thanks for the thoughts so far.
Here is a update:
1. I did tnhe leakdown test and there was no change - still 0. I think this means valves? I'm leaning agast a hole in the piston because the Bronc wasn't acting like a fog machine while driving.
2. Pulled the Valve Cover of the drivers side and turned it over everything looked like it was moving like it was supposed to.
3. Pulled the Intake Manifold. That looked OK.

I guess I'll pull the head tomorrow and take a look at the valves.

Am I missing something?

 

Oh. It also seems to me that this is a good excuse to upgrade my intake manifold. Anybody on the board do this? I'm not sure what I can get with this combo: Smog ***** (california), Holley 2 barrel carb (It's not an EECIV, I think it's the EECIII)

 

More likely EEC II. What does your distributor look like? Does it have a vacuum advance diaphragm and vac hose to it? EEC II with the DuraSpark II ignition did.

An EEC III distributor does NOT have a vacuum advance, and the distributor keys into the intake manifold - no twisting the distributor. The rotation pickup for timing was a wheel with some teeth on the crank. I don't know if they put those into trucks or not.

 

No vacuum advance. The only thing I had to do when I took the dist out was remove the hold down bolt

 

So how did things turn out?

 

Thought I'd drop an update to you everyone.
The wiring and vacuum lines that were damaged by the flames are now replaced. The valves for the number 8 cylinder were bad - edges looked a little chewed up. Head Gasket looked good. I ran out of daylight so I'll take a good look at the cylinder walls and piston tomorrow morning.
I'm going to start a different message thread, I'm seriously considering a couple of upgrades since I have it all apart...(always looking for a silver lining!)

 

Glad to hear that it wasn't too serious. I started blowing steam out my exhaust about six weeks ago due to a leak into #6, so my wife and I pulled the heads. Turns out that there were two cracks in the head at #6, and the exhaust valve seats on #s 5 and 6 were blown off. So, many dollars of machine work later, it's going back together. Stock Would have been a nice time to upgrade, but time and money cost, well, each other.

Good thing I got this fancy new job that ensures that I have no free time.

 

Your wife helped you with the engine? She got a sister? hehe

 

Daylight came. Here's a link to the pic of the #8 cyl. (I couldn't get it to show up in the post. Looks like the root of the problem was an intake leak, judging by the crap on the walls and piston.

http://members.***.net/rob-schneider/

 

Thanks for the great pics, Rascal!

Good Luck with your project.

 

That scuffing isn't very pretty. Where are you going to go with it now?

Yeah, she's got two sister in fact, both married. But, for the right price, I could provide phone numbers...

 

Bigric,
A wife that'll help you work on your car? That would demand a pretty good price! The help that I received from mine was that she only mentioned one time that I should get a different car (once is a big improvement so I'm hopeful, maybe I could get her turning a wrench one day!)

My current plan is to drop the oil pan, pull the piston from the bottom, clean the cylinder as best I can, hone it and see what it looks like. (if it looks good then it's a new piston and rings, machine the valves and put it back together)

I've got the Oil Pan mostly off. I couldn't find all of the bolts for the oil pump last night, so, I'll tackle it as soon as I finish my coffee.