I know,dead thread revival but I thought I should give some closure to all of you guys that had input. It has been a long time and I actually parked the car for the last year and stayed off the forums because I couldn't stand not having my car right. Well, a few weeks ago I finally got some motivation and decided I WILL resolve the issue. So, I began dissassembly, again, and set out to do what I should have done in the first place, rebuild it myself. Upon post disassembly inspection I found scored cylnder walls, scored camjournals and a scored oil pump driveshaft bearing. I then moved on to measuring. Found that the motor appeared to have been built too tight and DRY! causing the pistons skirts and cyl walls to score. Still unsure about whether this was the cause of my problems I decided to move on and redo everything anyway. I ordered new pistons and rings, gaskets etc. Found out that the new pistons, while being the "same size" were actually bigger than the other ones. This was good news because I was able to hone the scratches out and get my clearances right. For some reason, I had not thought to check the fit of the rings from my old pistons until my new ones arrived. So, my pistons were ".020" over, from the service information and the measurements I took I saw the block was only bored .018. After micing the pistons I got a measurement that was .017 over thus only giving me .001 piston/wall clearance. Finally, the cause of the smoke...drumroll, .070in ring end gap with the gaps on the same side of the piston instead of 180* out. The oil control rings would not even stay in the bore, they just fell right through. These were not the results for just one bore, this was EVERY CYLINDER. The only explanation I can see is that they either lost or broke my rings and reused the stock rings.
