1967 Ford Galaxie 500 FE 390 - issues with engine

[RcardoJigmond]

Hello to everybody .


I am the proud owner of a 67 Galaxie 500 , 4 door hardtop with a FE 390 engine .

Got the car a couple of weeks ago from a guy who had it for about 8 months from the nephew of the original owner .

He is not mechanically inclined ( supposedly) and did not know what has been previously done to the car .

I was impressed that the engine was very clean and seemed that it had been worked, all new painted valve covers, oil pan , clean , clean engine but with some minor leaks at the back of the engine ( thought I got lucky and somebody maybe recently rebuilt it ) , it has a lot of new parts, hoses, etc.
It has a fairly new Edelbrock intake & carb ( 4 barrel) some gaskets seem pretty freshly changed .
When we tried to start it at that time it tried to fire on starting position but on ignition ON it died. I checked the carb , it got fuel so I figured it has something to do with ignition .
A new electronic ignition and key switch got it fired up , I adjusted timing at 13 TDC , plenty of growl and power in it.

Oils looked quite fresh and clean both on engine and tranny.

But then it started leaking like the Niagara Falls from the thermostat housing and after a couple of gasket exchanges I realised that it was warped like crazy .

A new housing with new gasket fixed the issue and I got on my way back home at around 1 am in the morning .

The next day I wanted to impress my lady and fired it up , this time a huge white cloud came out of the exhaust , but stopped on normal idle , it only fogged the climate again when I was shortly revving up the engine , under high throttle or on the road I could not see any smoke, though a couple of days later and around 50 miles of fun driving the engine oil light came on ( checked and re-filled the oil when I got it ) .

Sometimes , when I started it and revved it up no smoke came out but most of the time it was pretty embarrassing , plus the huge oil consumption.

Driving around you could not tell anything wrong about how the engines road performance , take off power and high rpm#s without any hesitation.

I figured maybe a valve is sticking , bought a bottle of Mystery Oil added hals of it to the engine and the other half in the gas tank.

After another 50 miles or so , a ticking sound got louder and louder coming from the passengers side valve cover , but I managed to get slowly back home without any issues .

Back home I took the covers of , all seems very clean in there ( almost new ) drain holes are clear no rod seems to be bent on an visual inspection.

Today I rented a compression test tool from O'reilly's and done the test on the cold engine and just now realizing that I did not open up the carb.

Spark plugs seem normal ( brownish towards blackish ) no gung or fouling and this is what my cylinder readings where :

no.1 - 160 psi
no.2 - 165 psi
no.3 - 150 psi
no.4 - 140 psi ( went up quite slowly )
no.5 - 165 psi
no.6 - 165 psi
no.7 - 195 psi ( went up slowly and around 60 psi it jumped up fast)
no.8 - 205 psi ( went up slowly an around 90 jumped up crazy fast )


I have to mention that I took all spark plugs on drivers side off before I performed the test and since the valve cover was off too oil spilled over right over cylinders 7 and 8 and probably turned the test into a wet test .
The passenger side went on spark plug at a time although no.3 and 4 readings are quite low .

Can it be something to do with the valves ?

What do you guys think could be wrong and what would you recommend to do or proceed with .

I really appreciate your valuable input.

[tnlprt]

The smoke could be from a leaky intake gasket

[tsherry]

second on the intake gasket. With the (great) compression in most of the cylinders and that one outlier, I think valves sticking are a distinct possibility.

[tynall44]

change the whole intake or take it to a shop and have it milled