I need some help with my 1998 ram. Its a 318 4x4, with 81xxx miles and goes thru roughly 5 quarts of oil every 6-8 days. I can see blue smoke but only when I push it above 3000 rpm or so, and more smoke when its cold. I first thought it was valve seals, but have sinced moved to thinking the oil rings are shot. The truck has great power, idles and runs fine, no misses or stalling. doesnt smoke on start up that ive noticed. Any help would be appreciated.

 

check the plenum thread

 

Welcome to the forum. Please read this:

https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...new-topic.html

If you did you would have quickly have found this:

https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...um-thread.html

Good luck.

 

I did, and watched a bunch of youtube videos on it. But whats throwing me off is im not using coolant and the amount of oil im using. Evervthing i seen, guys are using a quart every 2 weeks, and using coolant. Im not using any coolant.

 

If you are using that much oil you have much more going on than just the plenum. I have to agree with you on the rings. 81k is really low miles to be needing a rebuild though...

 

I dont think the plenum issue causes loss of coolant, unless I missed something......but rings sounds like a culprit as well.

 

severe overheating of engine more than one time and no maintenance... blown plenum,cracked heads and rings. That's a lot of oil!

 

I read a couple posts and watched a couple videos where guys are losing coolant and when they did the plenum fix, they didnt use any more. As far as i know the motor hasnt been overheated, but possibly once. There was no thermostat in it when i bought it, im thinking it got stuck, and rather than replace it, he just pulled it and siliconed everything shut. Im not leaking oil anywhere and a compression check showed good pressure and every cylinder within 10 pounds of each other. I hate to pull it and replace it with something with 150000 plus miles. I dont have the time, space, or money to do a rebuild on it.

 

If you get all the supplies and tools together, the plenum repair, even for a first timer, is less than a weekend job. Great write up on here about how to do it. Have you looked into the kegger and seen oil pools?