constant miss and weird smoke

[monstertruck]

I bought this 1994 ranger 4.0 4x4 5-speed. I got it from a friend thats not very mechanically inclined. He said when he bought it the oil was white so he had someone help him replace the heads and all the gaskets, new plugs and wires also. Changed the oil and now the oil is fine, but after a weak or so of driving it let him sit along the road. So I got it for cheap, towed it home put a good battery in it and it started. It seemed to miss really bad so I put new plugs in it, the old ones all looked okay except the gaps wear way to wide. I started it and drove down the road, ran like crap So I check the firing order and the #5 and6 wires were backward. I switched them drove again seems to be a constant miss on one cylinder, and the converter caught on fire because it started glowing red and was covered in oil, luckely it only burned a vacume line by the time I got it out. I can't find the oil leak it seams to be blowing every where under there. I pull the plugs back out and the front right plug covered in oil. Also the weird part to me is there is white smoke blowing out of the motor at the front right top, near the corner of the intake and head. I cant see exactly where because its behind the a/c pump and bracket, and below the throttlebody. Could it possably be the intake gasket? Or maybe something they did wrong? Any help or suggestions would be great! I do plan on the 5.0 swap but wanted to wait a few months for warmer weather since I don't have a garage to work in.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

that sounds pretty serious...

the cat converter was glowing red because raw fuel was being dumped into it. i would do a compression test to see if all 6 cylinders have enough compression to run (this will rule out another blown head gasket or a bad head).

im not sure what to tell you on the smoke....thats kind of a weird place for smoke to appear. could it be residual oil or grease on the outside of the engine from having the engine apart recently?

 

[dgndngrngr]

+1 on the compression test. sounds like fuel is running into one or multiple cylinders and there is no escape for the exhuast gases and its being forced though the intake. they could be different problems on different cylinders.

 

[monstertruck]

wicked_sludge The smoke seems to be blowing out. It does it as soon as I start the engine before it even gets hot, and the whole time it's running. I'll have to see if I can get a tester in a few days, I don't have one. I was asking to see if anyone had simaliar proplems before or if it was something obvious I could have overlooked. Thanks for the input. Any other ideas?

 

[thegoat4]

Sounds like busted rings. The smoke is probably from blowby shoving its way out.

Do a compression test, like everyone has been saying. The cylinder with the oily spark plug will likely fail miserably. When it does, pull the head and see how badly the cylinder is gouged.

Since you plan to replace the engine anyway, you could probably just hone the hell out of that cylinder and drop an oversized piston in to make it run for now.

Please work on your spelling.

 

[monstertruck]

Well I pulled the motor out and took it apart. It didn't have anything on the ends of the intake where the silicone should be So that explained the smoke from the front of the motor and oil leak! So after I got the heads off I saw the #4 piston was burn't away at the top of the cylinder to! After I got it all tore down and got the piston and rod out, it burnt a hole right through behind the rings. Luckily the cylinder was okay except a small amount of the piston melted to the top of the bore. I honed it out and got a piston and rod from the junk yard, put it in and all together now it runs good. Also I found the fuel pressure regulator was leaking into the vacuum hose, so I grabbed one of those to. So far I put about 150 miles on it and all is well except a small tap that seems to be a rocker arm or something up top. Does anyone have any clue to what would cause it to burn a hole in the piston? I don't have no picks sorry, no camera

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

if it was running lean or detonating, you could have problems like that. those two conditions cause a lot of heat to form inside the cylinders, and it doesnt take much to melt the stock hypereutectic pistons.