‘Blow-by’ blow by blow ~ March 23, 1989

David Heiller

HMS Lorely is sick, deadly sick. That’s our car, a 1978 Ford LTD named after my wife’s mother (no resemblance), who gave it to us three years ago.

HMS Lorely, our 1978 Ford LTD didn't look
 this good. It was the size of a boat!

HMS (Her Majesty’s Ship) isn’t much for looks. The gray sides are rusting, and the vinyl roof is bare in the middle and shredded at the sides, cracked and peeling. It’s a real rag top. The loose flaps of vinyl slap the roof like a bongo drummer when she goes 50 miles an hour or more.

I don’t mind that. It’s the deadly disease which our friend Jim Kephart calls “blow-by” that really hurts.

I didn’t know what “blow-by” was until the car started leaking oil at an alarming rate. First it was a quart every 200 miles. then every 100, then every 50. Now it’s down to a quart every 25 miles or so.

I called Jim Monday night to ask him what exactly “blow-by” means. He took a deep breath, like he does when talking to one of his seventh grade shop students at Willow River High School.

“The gasses on top of the pistons are compressed. Then the spark plug explodes the compressed gasses. All right?” Jim says the words all right to his seventh graders a lot. “Due to the tremendous pressure increase—all right?—gasses escape past the piston rings into the crank case. Then the pressure builds up in there, because you have eight of them doing it. Those gasses must go someplace. There’s too much to go past the PCV valve, so it looks for the easiest escape route.”

I asked Jim what those escape routes were. “Pan gasket, rear main seal, valve cover gasket, breather in the air cleaner.” In HMS Lorely’s case, it’s probably all of the above.

It’s gotten to the point where I will either get fined by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for polluting our roadways, or honored by the Pine County Highway Department for paving all their gravel roads.

HMS can go about 25 miles before the engine overheats and she comes to a smoking halt. It first happened one cold Tuesday night when I was on my way to pick up the kids from the day care center. I had to hitchhike two miles into town to get the kids, then grab a ride back to the car. She started fine, after adding two more quarts of oil. Since then, I can guarantee about 25 miles before the engine light comes on and we coast to a stop.

When this hot engine hits a puddle of slush, great clouds of steam billow out from underneath. People turn to watch me go by, the vinyl roof flying like flags on a ship. We look like the space shuttle Discovery touching down on the dusty salt flats of California before a gaping crowd.

I asked Jim if we should get the engine fixed. Jim is in the process of fixing a “blow-by” problem on his own 1978 LTD. (Jim has a name for his car too, but I don’t think it’s printable here. I’ll call her Expletive Deleted.) He said it’s like a chain reaction. First you fix the rings, but as long as you fixed the rings, you really should replace the connecting rod bearings because of the increased pressure. In that case, you should put in a new timing chain “And as long as the heads are off, you’re crazy if you don’t grind the valves.” Jim gave a little laugh, the kind you hear in a late-night movie right before the eyes glaze over and the knife comes out. He’s looking at those jobs in Expletive Deleted, which now gets 10 miles to a quart of oil.

Reminds me of that old song, “The hip bone’s connected to the leg bone, the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone...”

So we’re in the market for a new car. We’ve looked at a few. Roy Sebald recommends a new Aerostar. “It’s only about $15,000,” he said in that nonchalant way of his. Lanny Lundquist has a nice 1982 Dodge van he’ll let go for $3,200.

I’ve even inquired into Bruce Lourey’s old 1976 Buick Electra. Bruce gave a start when I asked him about it. We were sitting at Dave Landwehr’s kitchen table, and Dave jumped even higher. Someone wanted to buy a car that gets seven gallons to the mile (that’s not a typo)? A car so long that you can see the Lourey car coming several minutes before you can see the Loureys? A car so big that when Bruce parks it in his driveway, the rear bumper is in Carlton County and the headlights are in Pine County? A car with an engine that’s “about a 454, about the biggest engine made,” according to Bruce?

Like I said, we’re in the market for a new car. And after all the research for this column, I’ve finally figured out what “blow-by” means: when the engine blows, get ready to buy.