Losing oil, and also sometime trying to stall.

[acarmody]

My VX V6 is using about 1L of oil every few weeks, and seems to be getting worse. Now the engine was rebuilt last year, but I believe it really only started doing it after I replaced the lifters a couple of months back. When I replaced the lifters I also got new, shorter rods becasue the last were too long (don't know how they were put together last time). Now since then (at least) it has been idling not the best and has stalled a couple of time, usually when reversing and slowing down or coming to a stop at lights, though usually does it more often when cold.

Now as for the oil, I had a compression test done a few weeks ago, all cylinders are the same except for number 6 which was 5psi higher, I think all reading were 240psi, I'll check when I get home. I also noticed that the number 6 spark plug was getting crap on it pretty quickly, not fouling the tip, but lining the thread, and also scorching one side of the white part near end. Looks like oil, but is kind of thin. Also the car blows smoke, when you turn it on, or leave it to idle for a minute and then give a little rev. Looks bluish but hard to tell.

Now I'm thinking purely coincidental that maybe valve seals on #6 cylinder has packed it in. And also thinking the idle problem maybe be from running pushrods that were 75 thou too long and getting tuned and when I fixed it, it may be acting differently and need to be retuned

What are peoples thoughts on this. Cheers in advance.

[acarmody]

Any advice?

[Tree cutter]

It does sound like valve stem seals leaking causing it to blow smoke when you start it. Was it the lifters or rocker arms that you changed ? Lifters run on the camshaft and rocker arms push on the valves. If you replaced the lifters then you would have removed the inlet manifold to fit them and could have a vacuum leak causing the stalling. I would check all hoses going to throttle body to make sure they are tight before taking the manifold off again.

[acarmody]

I was thinking valve seals too. Has anyone ever changed these with heads on car. I've practiced taking the seals off my old heads sitting on floor, easy enough, but how do you keep the valve up if you don't have a compressor? Rope in spark plug hole method?

It was the lifters I changed. Fairly straight-forward just time consuming.

And yeah I checked all the pipes on the throttle body, all tight.

I'm taking the car to an auto-sparky tomorrow to see if its chucking up any codes.