How much is normal for a 408? I hope I don't have an oil burner.....

 

Sure it isn't steam? Loosing water?

 

I don't think it is, but I'll double check the coolant level.

 

Does it do it when the motor is warm?

 

The motor we built in the Hauler's truck doesn't smoke any at idle, does burn a little oil though. His has Mahle pistons & low tension rings, forgot the skirt clearance and ring gap, though. They fit in there pretty tight, but still make a little noise cause of the lack of skirt material. His doesn't smoke at all really, but it does burn probably about 1.5 qts. between 3000 mile intervals.

 

Oil smoke is blue.
Fuel (rich) is black.
Water is white. I guess this could be "gray."

Visible water vapor at startup is normal and a sign of health. The by-product of complete combustion is water. Once it's warmed up though the exhaust temperature should be high enough to prevent the vapor from condensing into a visible form when it exits the tailpipe - unless it's cold outside.

 

Does is smoke all the time, while cruising too?

 

Not that I can see. I noticed that after a long drive it seems to get worse after it sits and idles a bit, definitely smells like oil, but only after idling for a little bit. When I first park it and look it's not bad at all. I'm just wondering if my pistons shrink a little bit and allow some oil to get behind the rings when they cool down a bit.

Anyway, I bought a compression tester yesterday, I'm going to check it out one of these days to make sure everything looks good compression wise.

Another thought is the crappy stock PCV system, I wonder if maybe I'm sucking oil into the intake? I probably should look into getting an LS6 valley cover.