About 6 months ago I purchased a 1959 Chevy 3100. According to the previous owner, he drove it to work for a couple years, and then bought another truck so it had been sitting in his field for the last two years. I've done some research on the casting numbers, and it looks like the block is a 54, and the head is an 848 head, so 57-62. After new plugs, wires, oil, petronix ignition, a carter YF, and setting the timing to the ball it runs pretty well.
I have a few questions:
The manual says it should idle around 450 rpms. It idles REALLY poorly at that speed, it almost sounds like a diesel. I can't get it to idle smoothly unless I raise the idle to 700ish. At 700 rpm I get a steady 21" mercury on a vacuum gauge hooked up to the intake.
It has some piston slap and puffs a lot of blue smoke out of the valve cover breather when cold. The amount of smoke seems to level off when the engine is warm, but it always seems to have a little. The exhaust smoke is clear, and I haven't seen any smoke out of the road draft tube. I didn't think it was smoking that much, but when driving home from work yesterday the oil pressure was starting to drop and it wouldn't idle well. I checked the oil, and it was a quart low. I've never seen any oil drips under the truck, so either it's burning oil, or puffing a quart out of the breather tube in about 150 miles.
Why would my motor be sending oil smoke out of the breather, and is that related to the piston slap/idlinq problems?
One last question, I found a rebuilt 62 235 on Craigslist for about 1200. Assuming a rebuild is in my future, would I come out ahead at 1200 versus sending trying to rebuild myself?
Thanks, Vince
