allright this has me stumped. i can't figure out the problem and no one else i know can either so i turn to you H-T. see what you think
the details
i was begged and begged to rebuild and engine that somehow devoured all 5 of the main bearings. i've never seen any motor do that before, go figure.
so the owner takes the engine to a machine shop and has it rehoned, hot tanked, and the crank checked out. it was then given to me in a basket.
so i order and install a Toga HV oilpump, Total seal rings, a new oil pickup, ACL bearings.i install them and then put the rest of the motor together. so i get it all together and install the thing in the car. i roll it over a few times to build oil pressure and get a nice pressure reading and fire the sucker up = it smokes like all hell. i shut it down and start checking things out. compression read low on one cyld. but the others were fine. about this time the original owner swings by. this is the guy who first built this car and then sold it to the kid who has it now. he tells me he had the same problem when i first built this thing. aparently it doesn't like aftermarket headgaskets and smokes like crazy whit one on. so i pull the head and low and behold, there is oil in the coolant jacket. n/p i go to honda and get a new gasket. install and start the car. same thing, smokes like all hell. so i will let the pic talk for the nex bit




the compression is solid 145 across the board. i don't have a leakdown tester but i can pressurise the cylders and listen for airflow. i get a small amount coming from the valve train but most i hear when i pull the dipstick and listen at the dipstick hole.
as you can see its blowing LOTS of oil though the combustion chamber.
i figure its one of 2 things, somehow i screwed up the rings or the valve seals leak. so i check to see if its blowby by removing the pcv and looking for smoke coming out of the pcv. there is no smoke. mmmmk maybe not the rings. so next i put dyed oil in the head after cleaning out all the oil that is in there already. i let the oil sit in the head, and come out every hour or 2 and roll the motor over by hand. then i pull the intake and exhaust manifolds off and get the blacklight to look at the valve stems for any of the dyed oil. there is none. intake side is super pretty and cleanish and the exhaust is coated in the oil blown out earlier but no new/dyed oil. wtf. so i pull the head and find this


ok, the coolent looks nice and green, no oil. but look at the oil sitting on top of the pistons.
so for ***** and grins and to see just how bad the rings are i decided to see how long it would take for oil poured in the pistons to leak past the rings. i filled each with oil, then left it over night. no oil is gone. so i started rolling the crank over both directions every so often. and still nothing has gone past the rings. WTF is going on here? any ideas people?

 

Might sound like a really stupid suggestion. Are you getting oil in the intake manifold from the PCV line? ( i know sounds dumb, but a friend just had this crazy problem)

N/M just read a little more in depth, you checked the PCV. Good luck with the problem.

 

What engine is this? Maybe it's not an original factor head and block, but rather a mini me swap and ls vtec setup. I think I heard that ls vtec setup have a special oil passage that has to be machined or something??????(correct me if i'm wrong). It seems like you went through most of the tests and theory's as I would of thought. Not trying to sound like a ***** or anything, but does the engine maybe have too much oil in it? Or is the toga racing pump maybe too high a pressure and causing blow by?? I don't know what the recomended oil pressure is for a turbo but I know there is a such thing as too high. I just did a turbo kit on my friend's chevy cavalier about 6 months ago and if I remember correctly his oil psi was a consistant 80 psi. Well, it smoked. After we did some research, we found that the too high oil psi theory. If the psi is too high, it will actually blow by the bearings in the turbo along the shaft, and toga oil pumps aren't exactly oem spec'd lol. A $3 oil restrictor later it wasn't smoking anymore and actually helped the turbo spool faster. But that still doesn't explain the oil in the cylinders. I doubt the oil blow If you haven't already, you might want to check to see if the head was warped and the deck of the block. If those look fine check out the piston rings. Maybe the openings on the piston rings weren't set opposite of each other or they moved when you installed them. My d15 smoked like a bandit just like that picture thanks to my piston rings going out after I got a head rebuilt and it bumped the compression back up. And what's with the missing head studs in the picture????

 

Honda's and total seal rings do not mix. I am 99% sure this has something to do with it.

 

i am the original owner of the car, the motor is a d16y8 (originally built by earl laskey) and is the original head and block.. The guy who owns the car now is a very cheap bastard and wants things done for very very cheap or nothing at all so it makes it hard to fix the car correctly. He doesnt want to spend money for machining and what not unless like 5000 ppl tell him that he needs to. However this is a very bizarre problem this car is having and hopefully someone can help this man out and get this car out of his hair. Al i will be by soon to help out as well when I get back in town and hopefully we can get our little business going again..

 

sounds like you have the rings upside down, so your pushing the oil in the chambers when on. compression would still be fine too when you do the test im pretty sure thats it.

 

maybe this, how is the oil return line from the turbo? is oil maybe biulding up in there? whivh would cause the turbo seals to leak? i know this doesnt explain the oil in the cambers. my h22turbo biult motor uses a prodive oil pump, my idle oil pressure is like 15psi, remember that vtec takes that to 100 or so psi.

good luck man. that sucks

 

oil return line is all an fittings and stainless line and an an bung welded on the pan.. Definately nothing going on there..

 

Did you do a leakdown?

 

is it possible the head is warped bad at one point? that could be why the HG isn't sealing right and allowing low compression in that one cylender. not too sure but just a thought. either than that i would have to say it would be the rings, maybe they haven't seated yet? just a thought. GL tho.

 

^^^ i was thinking a warper head or block too.

 

I would check straightness on the head and block.
also did you make sure to install dowel pins?

 

that looks like mine did when the turbo was soo fucked that oil was coming out all over the place on it...

 

might be a stupid question..but is there any oil in the turbo thats being pushed into the intake manifold?

 

Head could be cracked.

Totalseal rings are absolute pieces of ****.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by igo4bmx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I would check straightness on the head and block.
also did you make sure to install dowel pins?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Those are the first two things I would check as well

There's no such thing as a motor that "doesn't like aftermarket head gaskets". lol

Either the surfaces are straight or they aren't. Sounds to me like they aren't.

 

Looks like a ring problem to me. Did you install all the proper rings? Cause I had the same problem with a car I worked on and it was missing a ring. Maybe thats the problem I dont know.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by anti-jdm &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">might be a stupid question..but is there any oil in the turbo thats being pushed into the intake manifold?</TD></TR></TABLE>

this is true too... but it is a long way to travel for just a car idling....

that could be causing the oil around the plugs... and the smoke could be from the exhaust side of the turbo spittin oil

 

Hmm, a lot of interesting recommendations.

Why would you people still think its the rings if when he put oil in the cylinders, they didnt lose ANY oil.

Pull the head, send it to a machine shop. You have valve stem seals that are probably pouring in oil. Something is wrong with the head.....

Thats where my money is.

 

"the compression is solid 145 across the board. i don't have a leakdown tester but i can pressurise the cylders and listen for airflow. i get a small amount coming from the valve train but most i hear when i pull the dipstick and listen at the dipstick hole."


If he is hearing noise from the dipstick of passing air, im gonna have to say that it has bad leakdown results, which is probably from those "shitty" rings.

 

i bought a b16 crx that smoked like that. had perfect compression on all 4 cylinders, pulled the head and took it to get checked. who ever put the valve seals in last did it totally wrong. oil was going past them into the cylinders.

 

Rings or head. I most likely say rings.

 

i'd belive the rings too except for the fact that the oil i poured into the cyl 48 hours ago still has not drained past the rings. and the lack of smoke/obvious blowby coming out of the pcv system.
can the valve seals leak that much oil?
someone said that hondas don't like total seal rings. is there any proof to back that up? i searched prior to ordering them and found no negative posts about the rings. did i just not look hard enough?
yes, the rings are gapped and staggered properly; according to the instructions included by Total Seal. the dowl pins are also install corectly in the head.

 

rings staggered properly?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ryan89crx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">rings staggered properly?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Are you asking what this is.. if it is proper engine building technique. There is a certain way to place each ring.

If you are asking if he checked that, he just stated that the rings are staggered correctly.