91 tercel 3E-E smoking

[89toyota4x4]

I have read many posts on this site and thank everyone for the excellent information they are wiling to share with others. Please take a minute to read my post and offer any advice you may have.

My daily driver 91 tercel is really a great little car, very economical and even a little bit of fun to drive. However it has been burning oil with the typical blue puff at cold start. It has about 165k miles. Recently i have also noticed blue smoke in the rear view mirror after idling at a traffic light, then accelerating hard. It also leaks oil especially around the valve cover gasket, but I beleve the burning is the main cause of my oil consumption. I have parked the car since it had gotten to the point where i was adding a quart of oil every tank of gas (350 miles).
The car has the 3E-E engine
Gas milage has dropped from around 40 to around 30.

I did a compression test on 4/27/06 and found:

Compression readings of: 185, 185, 105, 135.
Then i added a tablespoon of oil as detailed in the chiltons manual and repeated the test.
Compression uniformly increased 30 psi to 215, 215, 140, and 170.

Spec compression (for a new engine) was listed at 150-170 psi.

My plan is to remove the head and have a few experienced people look inside at my cylinder bores and tell me whether its worth a rebuild.

The car is rust free, which seems to be a pretty rare find in central Ny (the rust belt). A guy GAVE me a complete, MINT interior for this car. I would really love to get some more years of service out of this car. I admire the car for its simplicity compared to other, newer cars. I am a college student on a tight budget and would rather not purchase another cheap used car and inherit a diferent set of problems.

I will repost in a week or two when i get the time to work on the car and have some people look at it for me....unfortunatly my workspace at at my neighbors garage and his truck is first in line.

Thanks in advance for your help.

-Chris-

[hackistry]

I'm by no means an expert, but if your compression goes up after adding oil into your cylinders, that means you have leak-by from your piston rings. If that's the case, it may be cheaper to get a rebuilt engine versus having to pull it all apart and rebuild.

Not sure if that's what you wanted to hear, but it's my 2 cents. g/l