I have a 400 sml. blk. chevy that started smoking badly yesterday and has a funny sound around the 6 and 8 cylinders. I was playing and got it up to about 5500 or so and smoke started coming from the passenger side tail pipe. Looked like water, the smoke was white. Pulled the valve cover off and it did look like it had a small amount of "milk" in it. Dipstick looks like regular oil. Started it up and it's not wanting to run worth a dang and it's still smoking, not as heavy as it was yesterday but still smoking. While it was running I looked to see what color the oil was as it came from the push rods and noticed that I wasn’t getting any oil at all to the top on the head?? Has good oil pressure on the gage! The sound it makes is not a deep sound or sound like it's deep in the motor. More like a mid range rattle higher in the motor. Any hints on what I might try and look for would be helpful! About the only thing I can come up with is pull it out and tear it down.. Thanks for your time!!

Sounds like a blown head gasket flooding both cylinders and now there not firing.But there should be oil to the pushrods,unless the oil is deluted to much with water! :eek:

Crack the drain plug and drain a cup out. See if it is H20 or oil.Look in the radiator and check the coolant color. See if it looks like grey/brown goo.

Head gasket was what I was thinking also but!! There’s always a "but" in these things!! I was just out looking at it and my oil looks fine and so does the antifreeze.. And I am getting oil to the top of the head so that make me feel lots better.. A friend of mine at work said something about a lifter going down and he might be right!! As I said the noise is higher in the motor and just might be a lifter because when I tighten down the intake valve on # 8 the noise stops and then slowly starts getting louder again. I think I’ll try throwing a new set of lifters in it later this week and see what that does. While I have the intake off is there anything I should check before I put it back together? Also what brand of lifters would you-all recommend getting. I’d rather just run down to Oreillys or NAPA and not order them, I usually can’t just order 1 thing!!! If you know what I mean!! Thanks for your help!! Thanks Nate!! I hope that’s all it is!! Later!!

Sounds like you figured it out. If you tightened the rocker nut and it quieted down for a second then came back, it sounds like a collapsed lifters to me.

Did you check for bent pushrods on #8. I hope that you are right about the lifter, BUT judging from the first post you made, I think you have more trouble than you think you do. I hope that I am wrong. Good luck.