So this probably points to bad rings, and needing to do a leak down, but I thought I'd ask just in case there's something dumb I'm forgetting.
Last year, me and my father did a decent amount of work on my '84 T1 Laser. I noticed a teeny bit of chocolate in the oil one day, so we replaced the headgasket that week, and replaced the end camshaft seal with the newer replacement style. I didn't drive it much after that because then the transmission broke (stock, weak trans, bearing failure like is common with those things), we replaced it with an A555, and then it was winter and time to put it away since I don't have a garage. Now it's time to fire it up and start messing around with it again.
So here's the problem. Ever since the head gasket job, it's using oil, and was even blowing oil out of the cap at one point. Not good. We couldn't think of any way we could have screwed up the headgasket job to make it do anything like that. We assumed that what had happened was that previously it was relieving blowby from worn out rings through the worn out headgasket and camshaft seal (it was burned through between two cylinders, forget which). With a good gasket and seal, the pressure doesn't have a relief so it builds up in the valve cover. Does this sound like an accurate theory, or should I look at something more obvious that I'm not thinking of first?
Oil pressure tested with a mechanical guage, by the way. 60lbs at start, 25-30lbs hot idle. 35-40lbs revving.
I'll do a leak down test on it maybe this coming week. If it's rings, I'll probably wait a couple months and buy a "new" T2 engine. Otherwise I might put the effort into debugging the T1 (had the IAC go goofy a couple times and it wouldn't stop revving, not sure if it's the IAC motor or the computer that is bad).
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