[Doc4421]

Folks,

Thanks so much to all y'all who helped me with the myriad of inane questions that I"m sure made you think I was a complete idiot. I've never worked on a car this old, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. Of course, the car worked before I started much of what I'm doing here, so I can hear the voice in the back of my head grousing, "See? It worked before you started screwing around with it!"

Anyway, I finished the valve seals, the grinding, the repainting and more. The guy from the auto store didn't have a choke tube, but he managed to help me build one out of line. I putzed with that thing for an hour, grinding down the one end to fit the hole near the manifold and finally got that to work. More and more stuff. I'll post pictures later, but I wanted to say thanks before I went to bed.

One last question: I said a prayer, turned her over and she started. I was looking for leaks along the valves and found none, but I did see some smoke rising out of the area where the heat riser meets the exhaust area. I ended up managing to salvage the heat riser instead of buying a new one (see earlier thread) and I painted the crap out of it. However, I'm worried about this smoke. It's not so much that it's filling the room, but enough to make me notice it. To be fair, I rarely worked on the car with the engine running before (long story) so it could have been there before.

Question: Any thoughts on what this could be and how worried should I be about this?

Thanks again. Time for some rest.

Doc

[Faith No More]

if you touched the exhaust area with your bare hands, it's the oils and grease from your skin burning off the headers. i had the same thing while replacing my starter (I have to remove my headers to remove my starter) and it would always smoke on initial start up, so to avoid any complications (doubt there would be any anyways) i would run it so it would get hot, than let it sit till smoke went away and repeat, until there was no more smoke. it wasnt very dark smoke, though. That's the first thing i think of with your smoke issue. you may also check your seal from your exhaust manifold to your heads, that could be leaking.

[67ragtopStang]

You likely dripped engine oil, on your exhaust manifolds, when you removed valve covers.

Keep an eye on it and it will most likely go away, after about an hour of driving.

Just make sure you are not leaking more oil, from the valve covers, onto the manifolds.