Sorry for such a long post....
I have a 68 with a 327 engine. Although it is not the engine that this car left the factory with, it is a Camaro engine (build date is Oct. 13, 1967)..my car appears to have been assembled in March of 1968.
When I purchased the car it had a Holley 457S style carb and an aluminum Holley intake (neither is correct..but functional).
I acquired the car in the early summer and ran it almost daily until September. It ran very well at first but after a week or two I noticed that it started using oil and this became progressively worst. I did not see any oil leaks under the engine..I assumed it was burning it.
By the end of September the car was backfiring, losing power and even stalling. I pulled the plugs out and 6 out of 8 were so badly fouled that the end of the plug looked like one black mass of oil and soot. Attached picture shows one of the better plugs.
I decided to have the engine rebuilt because it was (to me) obvious that the engine was burning oil. Once the engine was apart we saw some wear on the rings but not enough to create the mess that we were seeing on the plugs..
When I was taking the engine apart, I noticed that the intake manifold bolts were barely finger tight. If I'm not mistaken these should have been torqued down to about 35 ft-lbs. or so.
If the intake was not bolted down properly, is it possible that it was taking in oil (and air) from the valley under the intake? Could this have been the cause of the oil burning?
Two other things I noticed.
1. The engine timing when I first got the car was ridiculously advanced....like 18 degrees. I brought it back down to about 6 degrees..
2. Unlike other V8s I have worked with, this car would not ping. ..no matter what the timing was set for. (I know pinging is a bad thing and should be avoided....BUT if the timing was far enough advanced this engine should ping. It didn't...I don't get it.
Could these two issues have anything to do with the oil burning?
Vic