Valve Cover Vacuum chambers
 

Just wondering by chance, how important is it to seal the Valve Cover Vacume chambers?

If someone was stupid enough to just screw these on without sealing them, would oil get it there and get sucked into the intake manifold. Perhaps causing white smoke, really poor driveability, and high oil consumption?

Slightly possible, though I never had any problems when I opened the baffles to clean them out and installed them without using any sealant.

BTW... it's vacuum.

Sounds more like your valve seals..or PCV...or breather system.

I reinstalled them once without sealent and had lots of oil coming out. Every car is going to be different. Use sealant just to be safe.
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well white smoke is coolant, if you were burning oil it would be blue. i dont think that not sealing them would cause a significant amount of oil to be sucked up

Thanks guys, this happened last fall. The garage just got warm enough to go work in it.

This was a junkyard motor, we replaced all the seals, oil pump, H2o pump, timing etc prior to putting it in. The new oil pump was defective, we ran the car through multiple <30 attempts to get oil pressure, prior to figuring out the OP was bad. Put new one in and everything was great for 200-300 miles. Then my wife drove it and all of a sudden then white/blue smoke, I'm bad at telling the difference. It burnt through 4 Q of oil in 200 miles, and ran like crap.

So this is what I'm considering easiest to hardest. Vacuum chambers filled up sucking oil into intake. Sealed them yesterday, vacuum lines were dry so thats probably not it.

Next I think I'll check TB see if it skipped a tooth. Check PVC. Check coolant, oil for HG issues.

Next is valves or rings. I know it could be from the dry starts trying to get the OP figured out, just cant figure out why I would get several hundred miles of strong service before symptoms showed up.

I have a built 01 block awaiting a head, but I was hoping to get this one easily fixed so I can install my walbro FP, injectors, MAP, and AEM, prior to the new motor. Don't want to be experimenting on the expensive stuff.

I modified the baffles:

https://www.miataturbo.net/showpost....4&postcount=56