Not uncommon back when these old vehicles were in daily use to "fill the oil and see how much gas we have" Seriously, many of these old vehicles would be in operation till they fouled the plugs so often it was a real PIA to keep them running.

I can't help you with your oil problem but that old panel truck sure looks cool going down the road!

IMHO too much I burned gas (black smoke) on hard acceleration. Definitely too much blue. Since you have fresh oil in it I would just drive it a lot and see if it improves.

I don't remember Dad's 40 sedan smoking that much and we were using about a quart every hundred. The exhaust pipe looked about like yours too, black but dry. I agree, drive it. Also, make sure your engine is getting up to temperature. If your cooling system is in good shape you can get away with a 195 thermostat. I ran one in my 53 sedan before I messed up my cooling by adding A/C...

Fred, proper engine operating temp is another little issue of mild concern. My radiator, hoses, and water pump are new. The pointer on the gauge just barely moves off the C, and the radiator never gets too hot to touch. The thermostat has not been replaced, but it does appear to open and close. I'm not sure at what temp it opens, but well before 195 for sure.

Maybe my compression would be higher and oil consumption less with a different, hotter thermostat?

Not sure how much less oil it will burn, but it will wear a lot less. You might try 20w40 next oil change.

For what it's worth, I took my truck out today for about a 40 minute drive and gathered some temperature data when I got back:

Exhaust manifold 340, Engine block 190, Intake manifold 155, Coil 139, Upper radiator hose 139, Lower radiator hose 122.

Was that on the side of the block? Can you shoot the upper and lower radiator tanks? I'd change the thermostat to a 172 or 180 at least if it's running as cool as it seems.

How much oil did you use on the trip?!

Yes, I can shoot the radiator tanks next time I'm out and about with the truck. As you may have guessed, I have a new toy.

I just added 2 quarts of oil bringing my total oil consumption to 12. I'm up to 884 miles now which brings may average to 73.6 miles to the quart. My oil looks nice and clean on the stick. I guess it should. I picked up a couple of filters (still in stock at the parts store I frequent) and will change out my filter as soon as I get a chance. My filter has 884 miles on it and as some have mentioned, It is bound to be filled with crud.

Besides being clean, my oil seems to be loosing most of the "stickiness" it had from the Lucas Oil treatment. My oil pressure, however, still seems pretty good--a little over 30 lbs. going down the road--a little under 30 lbs. at idle. These numbers are a big improvement from when I first started running my truck.

Ross, I forgot to mention--the block temp was taken right next to one of the spark plugs.

Jim, I'm assuming that you have thermostats installed in the truck? Are you using an infrared thermometer to take surface temp? I don't know how that correlates to liquid temp around the thermostat but I would assume that to be much more than the thermostat housing surface temp which I would think would be a better place to measure . . . but still not the best. Ross's suggestion of the upper tank is good too.

Yes, I'm using an infrared thermometer. I just boiled some water and checked my "new toy" against a fairly expensive meat thermometer. The infrared thermometer was 10 degrees off on the low side at the boiling point. I'll take some more temps when I get my truck warmed up again. I will double check the thermostat as well. It just might be stuck because I would expect more of a temperature difference between the upper and lower hoses/tanks.

I doubt an infrared is any good shooting at water. If you put a metal spoon in the boiling water and shot that, I bet they'd show closer agreement.

For reference, here are temps I recorded after an intentionally punishing drive on a 97 deg day:

Location.................... temp
Top tank ....................173-179
DS head (center).............183
PS head (center)..............183
DS thermostat housing .....173
PS thermostat housing.......179

My 215 both before rebuild and after rebuild (well, really two different 215s since I changed blocks) ran cold with the small stock passenger car radiator. When I first got the car I assumed I had a stuck open thermostat because the car ran so cold. It never got up to 160 F with two different 180 thermostats. I checked operation of both thermostats (one I was removing and the new one I was installing) in a pan of water with a candy thermometer. Both thermostats started opening around 150 and were fully open around 180. I finally installed the 195 thermostat just to get my engine to run at 175.

Since your truck radiator is bigger than my car radiator you mat be experiencing over cooling too.

I've been a little afraid to check my thermostat, because I have heard that the housing can sometimes break and I don't want to take my truck out of commission unnecessarily. I really should man-up, however, and take a look. My thermostat has been in place at least since the late 1960's and is bound to have picked up some deposits over the decades. I used to think I could tell by the movement of the antifreeze in the radiator when the thermostat was open, but now I'm not so sure. The movement in the radiator--such as it is--now looks pretty much the same to me wether the engine is hot or cold. I'm probably causing excessive wear (in an already worn out engine) but running it at such cool temps.