Burning Oil. Need Some Knowledge.

[sleepydsm]

'92 Tsi AWD 5spd
Head completely rebuilt 1 year ago by Motors By Gosh; all new valves, stem seals, decked 3 angle and it nows has about 3K miles on it since I rebuilt the entire engine. BTW the engine has good compression, 155-150-150-155.
The car smokes, and uses oil. It is NOT the turbo, so don't even suggest that. Took the exhaust manifold off, small amounts of oil pooled on the closed valves, exhaust side. Intake side clean, but it probably gets washed from fuel.

After the cams were removed from the head tonight, Blageo23 pointed out that some of the stem seam "springs" that keep tension on the valve stem were completely gone, and I saw one that was sitting ontop of the valve stem seal.

How the hell could that have happened?

Any one else have this happen?

I was hoping the problem was just bad oil control rings, but I'm pretty sure its the nearly new stem seals... wtf!