You can poorman a leak down test with a compression tester if your spark plug hole side has a standard air line fitting on it, then you can screw it in the hole and apply shop air 120-180psi to the cylinder, roll the motor over by the crank pulley slowly untill you hear the air leak stop this indicates the intake and exhaust valves are closed and the cylinder being tested should now be “sealed” with the air cleaner housing lid off strike a match or lighter over the top of the throttle body. If the flame gets pushed upward that indicates a leaking intake valve. Repeat same test at the tail pipe if flame is pushed out away from the tail pipe that indicates a leaking exhaust valve. If both test good pull the dip stick out and repeat there, this will indicate blowby usually of the rings. The odd chance you hear bubbling sounds when a cylinder is under pressure slowly pull radiator cap and check for bubbles, this indicates a blown head gasket. If no bubbles there pull the oil fill cap and listen in the valve cover for bubbling oil which can also be a head gasket, check by removing the pcv breather on the other side. It’s a very rudimentary way to leak down a cylinder without the proper tester but it’s easy to identify a problem cylinder. As you go through testing check each sparkplug for oil fouling that should help quickly show which cylinder is burning the oil and will probably fail the cylinder leak down test in some way
Hi JacobN.
I did buy a leak down tester at one point. Used it a couple of times . . . . on mileage engines they always failed. Engine I could make runnable to the reasonable satisfaction of the owners. The “unreasonable” expectation owners needed to go buy new car lot and make payments.
Just do a dry, then oil down the plug hole wet compression test. You are only looking for cylinder evenness balance.
A holed piston will stick out like a sore thumb.
Go back to you sequence of occurrence:
it happened relatively suddenly within ~100-150 hours of operation.
Your most likely culprit is that base of intake manifold plate loosing its gasket.
Flashlight look for oil down the held open throttle body. Yes? Leaking base plate gasket.
Pull the intake and fix this.
On your to-Florida hard charging trip you could have also seized/collapsed the pistons oil control rings. Then becomes a gross oil burner. Using gasoline that’d usually be from heavy loading engine overheating.
Woodgassing? Soot clogging the oil control rings . . . . maybe?
Overhead cam engines flood the upper with pumped oil. I seen a gross oil burner created after a routine shim adjustment on the direct bucket style by cracking the hardened valve stem seals lips.
Your push rod engine actually minimize oils to the valve stems. Can get oil burning there but it is a longer term wear problem.
Since you have spare out of vehicle engines; I-was-you; I’d heads off, pan off prep one just for your trip.
A no-machine work, 20K miles restore.
Chem dunked clean the pistons. Then new rings. Cylinder ridge removal and flex hone job.
NOT block dunked cleaned. But a manual solvent wash out to de-sludge. This era Dodge’s cast iron V-6’s and V-8’s from crankcase vapors builds-up a layer of hard carbons on inside of the block surfaces. Then sheds this as hard carbon particles. They float and get sucked up into the oil pump screen. Then a weird lose oil pressure hot at RPM.
Wire brush out as much of this as you can reach.
Always install a new oil pump.
Pull the valves to be able to de-carbon the baked on crust to get flows past back.
Just hand lap them in. No fancy grind. Loose guides and all.
You are going cheep. Only expecting 20-30K restored life. The irregular worn cylinder bores will force this.
Ha! How I did my owned different 26 vehicles from the age of 15 to 26. I wanted to learn the nuts and bolts on many different types as possible . Doing this, poor-boy, cheep.
After ~26 y.o. I seriously chased other pursuits and just bought better, lower mileage. Changed oil and fluids a lot to extend useable life’s.
“Fluids are cheep. Engines/transmissions/differentials/pumps are expensive.”
Regards
Steve unruh
I would start by pulling the spark plugs. Is just one oil wet or are all of them oil wet.
I did that this morning there was only one really wet I don’t think it was firing. #8 cylinder.
There is no oil in the intake its dry, but there is oil all over the outside of the engine and the valve cover around and behind #8 cylinder.
No. Not on this engine type for massive oil leak. Overhead cam engines Yes at the pressure oil feed corner.
Oil leakage out the rear distributor hole, maybe? I seen this on Chevy’s. Even had to add a hand cut gasket to the mounting flange in addition to the distributors bodies o-rings.
That would explain the external oil. That oil dripping down onto he hot exhaust the trailing oil smoking. Blown out rear of valve cover gasket could do this too. Drain back valve oil collects there inside the valve cover.
Does NOT explain an electrode oil fouled spark plug though. That’d have to be internal.
Two problems I expect.
S.U.
Jakob,
I don’t know if it’s relevant to your type engine or not, but it’s relevant to woodgas.
I owned and old Volvo dacades back - similar to the one I’m running now. Goo baked up in a plastic filter box connected to crank ventilation/valve cover/egr/intake (something like that). I don’t recall where oil was pushed out, but there was certainly a mess under the hood. The fix was just knocking that baked filter out and let things breathe freely.
Also, I partially lost brakes on the Mazda resently. One push on the pedal was ok, but hitting the brake twice led to very little braking force. I punched the screwdriver into the intake vacuum connection and fed the motor a plug of soot. Brakes are as good as new now.
So, my hint is - look for soot plugs to do with any vacuum hose and add that to your personal woodgas vehicle inspection list 
@wobigtd Did You ever figure out how much wood you ended up with? I am trying to decide how much to load?
For my tenth version gasifier, I take one standard bag (50L volume) for 160 km😂
I figure everything at 1.7 lbs per mile and I always end up with a lot extra, but I hate running on gasoline so I want to make sure I have plenty.
I guesstimate around 800 lbs. How many people are going to be with you? Also known as baggers 
LOL! There will be three of us total.
Thanks.
Hi Jakob. Sorry about your engine. Is your spare engine fuel injected or carborated? If the latter then I’d slap together a crappy engine stand and pipe it into the cooling system of the truck and fire it up. Then you can do a compression test and if the cylinders are alright I’d stick it in the truck.
I see I’m still on your schedule. I don’t have any kind of chunker so I will need some information about what size and how much wood you want. Also how dry? Any amount will be not problem but I will need some time to cut it up. Looking forward to meeting you.
I usually run between golf ball and tennis ball sized wood in a variety.
I an hopping to be coming through there in the early to mid part of sept.
If i get to your place empty i will need about 450lbs of wood to get to the next stop. I might have a some of that depending on how much @BillSchiller has for me in MN.
Look forward to meeting you as well.
The engine is an fuel injected. I have pics of all i have been doing the past few days but my phone is dead and i can’t get them transferred i’ll [post tomorrow.
OK then. I’ll start working on your wood supply. I wouldn’t have a clue on how to get a modern engine running on a stand unless I had a separate ECM and had a clue how to plug it in.
Jakob,
You are welcome to come through the UP and fill up. Just let me know what size chunks you need. Normally, I use coppice Sugar Maple, dead on the stump. Seems to be the best fuel for instant use. Otherwise we have barrels of charcoal, and torrified wood.
Calumet, MI
Got a couple more bags to fill
Hope to put the trailer on a scale Monday to get a better idea of weight.
From East Wenatchee to Choteau Montana it is 8 hours and 18 minutes. Going the I-90 route and not the highway 2 route, It is 527 miles instead of 583 miles, a little more then a hour drive going the Highway 2 route. When you leave Washington State the speed limit goes from 70 mph. To 80 mph. on the freeways And higher in some parts. Minimum speed is 20 mph under the speed limit. Me personally I would would rather dive the highway I-90 route. 527 miles. But man do they drive fast in Montana. I have seen 90 miles a hour.
Highway 2 route 60 mph. No freeways, it is up to you.
If I can haul 1000 pounds of wood and you are figuring 1.7 pounds a mile. That you mean 588 miles of wood in my truck. Plenty of wood to go either route.
I haul back from Mike’s place the wood you will burn leaving his place and get to mine.
So when we use all of my wood up in my truck you will still have a full load of wood from leaving Mike’s place to go on to Minnesota to get to Bill Schiller place.
Bob
Sounds great I like the I-90 route as well I think we decided to go that way and just hit Canada out in MN after Bill’s.
On another note Don Manes and i got the Friday hangouts to work sort of this morning. My web cam wouldn’t cooperate but other than that it works great. I am hoping to setup a scheduled time each day for a live feed of the trip on the Friday hangouts thread. What times would work best for you guys, we should see what works best for the most people.
Did you do it on your phone?
Bob