I have been thinking about my motor some.

It has about mid 40 thousands of mileage and is about 12 or more years old.

What I am thinking my best plan is would be to buy some Edelbrock RPM cylinder heads. I found and Edelbrock performer intake that is for sale local for about $75 but practically new and then put on the Holley four barrel that I have.

My car smokes some if you let it idle but doesn't seem to use excessive amounts of oil. Runs well most days but I think it really needs a valve job and probably a good tune up.

Anyone see any problems with buying some "bolt ons" now and waiting till a later date (year or maybe two) then pulling the engine to have it bored with a new cam added, etc at that time?

There is one guy I know across town that has an early 70's model 302 that he said is rebuilt and bored .40 over. Not sure exactly how recent a rebuild it is though.

 

That would help some since it would flow better.

 

With 40k, you're just getting it broken in! Assuming regular oil changes and not too many short runs (start and stop without letting the engine fully warm up), I'd upgrade the top end now. Later if you decide it needs a total rebuild, the heads, intake and carb are already finished.

 

That is sort of what I was thinking....however, may run a compression test on it just to be sure there are no larger issues.

My main problem is that if you let it idle it starts smoking. It sometimes also smokes if you rev it and let it drift back to idle.

Seems worse if the car has sat...for example when it sat a few weeks to have the floor pans done and the paint on the roof.

It has a sputter or miss at idle also and my thinking is the heads / valves are the issue.

Could be a valve that is sticking which would explain the on again / off again nature of the smoke or could be bad valve seals but all seems to be head / valve related to me at least.

 

What kind of motor are we talking about?

 

the engine is a 289