On my valve cover on my 22R the front breather port has air coming out of it and I'm pretty sure the air is supposed to be going the other direction. Is this a sign of blow by? I added a can of Restore to my oil and it seemed to help a little.

 

Mine does the same thing. I hope it's not a problem! What is blow by?

 

Blow by is when the engine is worn out and oil, gas, or a mix of the two squeezes in between the cylinder walls and the cylinders and goes above the pistons. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

That it correct, the compression rings can't have a 100% tight seal even when new, this causes air to blow past the rings and into the crankcase during engine compression cycle.

So don't worry, blow by is normal, and air is supposed to push out of that hole (not suck in), even on a brand new engine there is 1-4% loss. If you want to know the condition on your rings you can do a dry/wet compression test and a leak down test (will also help you check valve seal).

My rings were completely shot, and and I had a lot of air and oil vapour/droplets coming out and covering the underside of the hood and valve cover in a matter of minutes.

 

I use to run a breather on my pcv hole, and the hole near the oil cap. The pcv would let out a good amount of oil, but I have never seen any out of the hole near the oil cap. My engine is freshly rebuilt with a new head. Is it normal for oil to come out the pcv?

 

Well that's good to know that air is going the right direction. I also did get some oil vapor like you described but that seems to have stopped since I added that can of Restore. I want to do a compression test but I need to see if the local auto parts store loans the tool for that.

 

I don't think that is supposed to happen. The PCV is supposed to connected with a hose to somewhere on your manifold down stream of the carb. The front hole is fine to run a breather filter though or connect it to the air filter section of the carb.

 

Are you sure you have the baffle underneath the valve cover? I can't say for sure if it is normal or not. Do you have specs on the rebuild like ring gap and piston to wall clearance? Is it fully broken in and did you do it the right way (i.e. hard break in, no stable rpms on low load or neutral)

83toyota: yeah those cans of engine restore should help seal the rings a little better, I like the lucas stuff. You can always do a seafoam treatmeant to try and free the rings if they are stock, I like that stuff.

 

On a stock setup a vent tube goes on the PCV (positive crankcase ventilation) valve then to the stock air cleaner cover, the crankcase gasses are pulled into the combustion chamber thru the carb. to be burned. When these things were new that was "smog control device". They didn't exist till the mid @ 60's
So not only should there be some pressure on the engine side but there was ment to be a vacuum on the carb side, hense the "positive" venting.
If you have a lot of oil gases then you could have a possible problem.