Greetings from Savannah GA

Greetings to all!

My name is Charles and I have a long history of longroofs. In my family we have had many different makes and models with my current one being a 2001 Volvo V70 Turbo with a manual transmission(in Volvo world its a fairly rare duck). Although its a blast to drive, in my heart I long for an old American wagon to cruise. And I think a last gen B body would fit the bill. I don't need fast, just comfy cruisin'. I am going this weekend to look at a 91 OCC. It has 211,000 miles on it. I have read a lot of posts on here about what to look out for when shopping. One thing the guy told me over the phone is that it smokes a bit at start up and then clears itself out and runs fine the rest of the day. I know in older Chevy small blocks(or really any older V8's) this usually was a sign of valve stem seals that have given up the ghost. Is this still the case or do these cars have another issue that could cause it? Also, how bad or good are the transmissions from this era? At that mileage is it on its last legs or may have a little life left in it? I ask all this because the car is almost five hours away so I want to have as much knowledge as I can before I get there. So thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide. And hopefully if this pans out I can officially be part of the group here.

Oh and by the way, I was at the Daytona show and saw quite a few wagons there. If they were members cars, congrats to all. They all looked great.

A '91 is perfect for comfy cruisin'.  If you plan on long distance reliability, at 200k I'd definitely plan on new valvesprings and valve stem seals, and a transmission rebuild in the near future.  Was it Sprocket who said the oil pumps on the '91-93 engines get flaky at 300k miles? Or maybe it's sooner than that?


I would not trust 28 year old rubber seals inside the transmission.  And Sonnax has so many good parts for these transmissions that you can have a bullet-proof one at near-stock power levels for short money.

I agree with Sherlock. Definitely sounds like it needs valvce seals. You'll need to remove heads and have a machine shop go therough them. I'd budget about $500 for machine shop fees, gaskets and incidentals.

Thanks for the info guys. I went yesterday and pulled the trigger. Drove back about 250 miles. Trans shifts like a dream. And yeah definitely needs stem seals. Otherwise drove great, mostly. I'll start a new thread on my new project once I get pics(cause I know everybody loves pics).

RadioFlyer wrote:

Thanks for the info guys. I went yesterday and pulled the trigger. Drove back about 250 miles. Trans shifts like a dream. And yeah definitely needs stem seals. Otherwise drove great, mostly. I'll start a new thread on my new project once I get pics(cause I know everybody loves pics).

I'm not as technical as some folks but i get by,
When i have owned sbc gen 1's that smoke a little on start up, i pull spark plug with piston down, feed some string in there till its crowded undo each rocker arm witness marking each rocker nut to stud and counting the exaxt number of turns to remove the nut and rockers. Then i rotate the that piston up till crank stops, which squeezes the string up against the valves so they cant drop, whack the top of the retainers with a 5/8 socket to loosen them then use an on engine valve spring compressor,( i have an old home made one (google wiil provide u lots of images and options) remove the old valve seals, and use ford umbrella style seals. Put it all back together and oil consumption is usually cured along with the diesel like puff at start up,. And on tbi's it keeps the egr passage cleaner. Even if the valves are .050 sloppy in the guides the umbrella seal keeps the splash off.

Peoples results will vary because of the different skill levels attempting to do the job, but it works for me.

Yes that was me about the oil pump. Out of the 14 wagons I've owned 8 have been TBI cars and 6 of those 305s. Two of them had over 280K and both of them the I noticed when throttling down say off an interstate off ramp, the oil pressure would drop to zero (was fine while under load). I'd put it in neutral and give it a little gas and it would come back.

Sold both cars fairly quickly after it started and warned both new owners to replace the oil pump. Neither did and within a couple of thousand miles the engines were done. If you are going to pull the heads and all that, I would drop the pan and replace the oil pump too.

Or run it for 80K as is and save up for an LS swap, or a TBI 350 to swap in.

phantom 309: The string idea is ingenious. Thanks for that.

Sprocket, two questions. Can the oil pump be changed in car? Is there sufficient clearance with regard to the crossmember?

Because I am cheap if I decided to go TBI 350, how much of the existing electronics are reusable? Are the TBI and ECM the same? I would assume the ECM would have to be changed.