3.2 Engine Failure Mode?

[Outlaw_550]

I am surprised and amazed to have found this BBS. Who would have thought...

I recently bought an '87 Carrerra 3.2. I knew the engine had a problem since it smokes. Needs a quart of oil with each fillup. The car only has 65K miles and is in nice shape. I had my local shop look it over and it turns out that #5 and #6 have excessive leakdown. (#5 is leaking 78%) The plugs for those two cylinders were oily - the rest not. I checked valve adjustment and it was ok. I thought I would see if anyone has a theory for these symptoms. Is this one of those: "Oh yeah, the cracked rings" syndrome? I am an old 356 guy and I don't know the 911 universe.
Dutch

[88-diamondblue]

Welcome to the board. Most likely valves and valve guides are shot. Carrera's have been known for early valve guide wear. This is some thing that needs to be taken care of right away. Factory spec on oil consumption was 500-600 miles per quart. The valves get cooled by contacting the valve seat. If they don't make contact they get too hot and you run the risk of a valve breaking and the damage that follows will increase the dollars to fix by a lot. A top end will cost from $2000 doing yourself and up to $5000 to have it done. When having it fixed replace the lower twelve dilavar head studs with factory steel as they will break. The top twelve are already steel.

You can do a search and will find many threads on this subject.

[Outlaw_550]

Thanks for the reply. I had heard the valve guide material used in this era didn't hold up well. It still seems odd that four cylinders have very low leakage but the other two (adjacent cylinders) have high leakage. It is as if those two (5&6) ran hotter than the rest. I will be digging in to it and will post more info when I find out what is going on. Thanks for the tip about the head studs.
Dutch