Ok, so my fully built motor has about 400 miles on it now. It runs good with the exception of the loping idle and 0-2k rpm occasional stumble. I know my dist. timing was just a tad off from not drilling out the hole completely.
Today I bought a new cap and rotor and drilled the hole out completely to put the timing on. I noticed that there is a little oil on the spark plugs of cylinders 1 and 4. Is this something I should be concerned about or is this just temporary until the rings fully seat or something?
The car seems to be running well, it just confused me to see oil on the spark plugs.

d16y8 into 89 crx

 

Well glad you got it running Steve.

I have no clue what the oil is,but is it just on the threads of the plugs or is it everywhere?

 

Are you getting smoke out the exhaust?

 

how did u break in the rings

 

Seating rings can be tricky depending on what the material of rings are made out of. What type of cross hatch was put in hone etc. The rings should be sealed after 400miles imo. There are many ways you can "Break in" a engine. Have you did a compression check? assuming its running ok.. you probably wouldnt. Were the valve stem seals replaced ?

 

Yeah, everything in the head was new. No smoke from the exhaust. I followed je's ring gap installation dimensions of .006 x bore for forced induction apps. so I think they are on more of the loose side. I just bought new plugs and I'm gonna see if I can get the oil traces cleaned out and see how it goes.

 

Maybe its time to stop babying it and give her some RPMS so those rings will seat in nicely

 

haha, I just replaced the spark plugs and got all of the timing on. It runs better with the idle no longer "loping".
I'm wondering if the oil on the tip of the spark plugs was a contributor to the rough idle. Maybe it didn't have enough spark to ignite the cylinder through the oil residue. The only thing I'll have to worry about now is if the oil will be getting to the new spark plugs any time soon.

 

geez i hope not, glad to see you got it running well, so was it that crank pulley at first?

 

What kind of oil did you use to break this thing in?

On my last fresh motor, I used straight 30 weight for that v8.

Damn I should be a rapper yo