How many miles are on the engine?

On my first car back in high school, I thought about just pulling the heads and doing a valve job.

A very wise father of a friend, who still had his original '64 GTO and was a die-hard "car guy", cautioned me that if I just rebuilt the heads and slapped them back on a tired motor, I could actually cause more problems.

He pointed out that by rebuilding the head I would be putting my compression ratios back where they were originally. And if my piston rings were also old, the valve job would speed up their failure or perhaps start causing me to have oil control problems.

Old BMW's benefit from just head rebuilding as they are purposely constructed with loose tolerances and are made to be freshened up before the motor. That's why the old BMW staight sixes have high oil consumption and will start burning oil sooner that your typical American V8.

Or at least that's what I was told about my old 320 I had when I was overseas in Germany. I went through a quart of oil about every 500 miles.