Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Zetec Maintenance Oil Dipstick is smokeing

Haven't posted in along time. My car just hit 114k and I found out that I had a broken front motor mount and it's probably been that way for 2 years now since my accident. Anyways it's fixed the porblem is that recently my car has started to burn oil and the I took the dipstick out of the car after I shut it off and had smoke coming off of it. You can feel the heat coming off the engine and it never used to do that. I use castrol synthetic 10w 30 but im thinking of switching to mobil 1 after reading a post about how Mobil 1 is the one true synthetic. I looked in all the other forums and I couldn't find much on my problem so that is why i'm posting here. Valve cover gasket was changed a year ago but the retard didn't put all the rubber grommets around the bolts back on correctly. There is no oil in the top part of the spark plug chambers but I think there might be at the bottom. I hope to hell it's not head cover gasket. Any suggestions would be appreciated my friends.

Mine started doing that when I took the heatshield off for awhile. Somehow that heated up the dipsick tube and made it "smoke" whenever I looked. Is your heatshield in place?

Yeah I haven't touched that.

Aw ok I will check that, but I don't think so. Nothing's been moved near that radiator since it was replaced two years ago when the car was in an accident.

Aah, I see it in the Haynes Manual. The Upper Exhaust Manifold heat shield. With an X over the hand illustration.

Ok so I had new tires put on it today and was out driving it around on the freeway to test it out. Drives a lot better. I got it back in the garage and I feel the hood and it nearly burned my hand. I opended it up and took out the dipstick. No smoke coming off but the it was hotter than you know what. The engine block is really really hot. It's not normally like that. I know the coolant needs to be flushed but the wp is only about 20k miles old. The temp guage only gets to about half way and it's really not picking up like it used too. Then u turn the ac on and the lights dim and the car barely wants to move. Something is not right here and it's starting to bother me. Also it just started leaking oil around the pan and the tranny. The tranny isn't leaking, motor oil is just dripping off of it. Any ideas to my mind at ease would be very helpful thanks guys!