240 Uh-oh, gas in the oil

Well I think I might have killed my engine. A little background, the car is a stock 76 242 that has been sitting for 7 years. I replaced the gas tank and both fuel pumps and got the engine running and idling on its own last week. Since then I replaced all of the vacuum lines, the spark plugs, the coil and the rubber bellows that connects the air meter to the throttle body. I tried to start it on Saturday and cranked for a long time but couldn't get it to start. On Sunday, after charging the battery I cranked on the engine with my foot halfway on the throttle and eventually got the engine to run. It was running really rough, smoking and it would die as soon as I took my foot off of the gas. After a few minutes of running I shut it down because I smelled gas. There was gas dripping from the clutch bellhousing which is really strange. The top of the motor was dry and none of the gas lines for the K-jet appeared to be leaking. I think the gas was coming from the crank case somehow because when I checked the oil is smelled and looked like gas. Could all of the cranking to get the engine started washed out the cylinders with gas until it got in the oil pan? Did I blow the rings out of one of the pistons? What do you think?

Because of how little the engine ran, I would find what caused the leak, change the oil/filter and be on your way. Maybe you have a stuck cold start injector or any of the injectors. Pull the plugs and see which ones are soaked in gas, I don't know anything about the kjet system but you should be able to pull the Kject injectors and let the system pressurize by turning the key on, look for leaks.

Edit: I should clarify. Maybe you have an injector that is stuck open causing flooding, which yes, could definately casue your oil to smell like gas as it gets past the rings.

Don't jump to conclusions. Start looking for where the gas is coming from first.

Gas dripping from the clutch bellhousing? I'd get under there and inspect all the fuel lines after letting the fuel pumps running a bit, then look for leaks under the hood, then check for a sticky injector.

Don't want to drive a fireball down the road

vxracer said:

Don't want to drive a fireball down the road

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Think a lot of us on here would be on 30 year old fuel lines.. scary thought really.

The top of the motor appeared dry, I really have no idea where the gas is coming from other than maybe leaking out the rear main seal. I didn't see any of the fuel lines leaking. Maybe one of the injectors is stuck open or something and just dumping gas everywhere. Hopefully I can salvage the B21, it only has 140,000 miles on it. An LH 2.2 conversion is starting to sound real good right about now, I will be on the lookout the next time I am at the junkyard.

Just run the pumps. Then get under car and check tail to nose. If no leak, stand over motor. There is a line to, and from, the fuel pumps. They connect to the fuel rail and fuel pressure regulator... Rule those out external fittings and lines out first. Then focus on injectors and internal. All it takes is a gas wet bellhousing. Add exhaust pipe or a spark...

Update, I got the car running again. I had changed the coil and spark plugs before the whole gas filled engine fiasco. I pulled each plug to see what had happenned and it appeared that only one cylinder was firing at all. I think the new coil I put in didn't have a good connection on the main wire to the distributor and I was only running on one cylinder. I guess the fuel was washing down the other cylinders and filling the crankcase? When I drained the oil pan, around 2 gallons of fuel dumped out! I put in some fresh oil, put the old plugs and coil in and it fired up. It smoked for a while but seems to be running fine now, I think I will just stop messing with the engine making "improvements" for a while!

2 GALLONS!!! I can't believe the bearings are still there. That's a very large amount of fuel in the crankcase. Keep an eye out. I have a feeling this didn't fix the issue.

I'm not 100% sure but I dont think these engines will even idle or rev on one cylinder. I've had mine be able to idle on two and rev a little bit, but I was definately not going anywhere at all. It had zero power. Do you mean that one cylinder WASN'T firing at all?