The V8 Owners Forum -

Bit of a strange one this as it doesn't seem to be using much coolant but my oil is milky and as soon as the engines started its blowing alot of steam out of the breather if disconnected. I run my breather through a pcv valve into the front port of the Edelbrock carb and i took the hose off and could shake water out of it. Just been out on it (its now in a trike) and its running hotter than normal now too.
I fitted a new valley gasket when i fitted the carb so that should be ok as all clean and correctly torqued down. Could it be the timing cover gasket or should i pop the inlet manifold back off. Please don't say cracked block or slipped liner. Engines from about 96 so later serpentine belt.

If it wasn't doing it before you had the valley gasket off, then that is likely your problem.
Look where you last worked first.

It's always had a bit of steam from it. Wierd thing is its instant as soon as started even from cold. No smoke from the exhaust once warm and it runs fine.

Thinking about it the reason it may be worse now is if it lost some coolant into the oil when I removed the inlet manifold. Think I'll change the oil at the weekend and see how it is after that.

When I was rebuilding my engine I had a tin valley gasket that didn't seal properly. When I took the sump plug out coolant gushed out.


I cleaned out the sump and replaced the gasket with a thicker coated one and water & oil no longer meet.

I have a composite gasket already. Hopefully my new theory is right and it's just from where it was changed. Sunday was the 1st proper ride on it since it was changed. I have to drop the sump anyway to change the gasket so will clean it out and see how it is after that.

In cold weather, RV8s seem to steam from the exhaust much longer than most other cars. I wondered on mine if the SS exaust made this worse. Or perhaps it's most cars having cats. these days.

Mine doesn't smoke out of the exhaust for long, usually just while on choke. It does have stainless pipes but no cats.