91CivicTurbo

sorry its so long but I wanted to give as much info as possible

I recently bought a 91 civic with a T3/4 turbo and a B18A1 motor. it always smoked when i hit the gas hard and smoked a little while idling. A couple days ago I was driving it around and it seemed like it had a bog as i got into high revs (right before shifting) As I accelerated pretty hard thru 1st 2nd and 3rd it suddenly started bogging smoking like crazy thru exhaust and from under the hood and the car died and would no restart. I popped the hood and the engine was covered in oil. no leaks anywhere around the block or head.. it all clearly came out the breather on the top of the valve cover. when i turn the motor over it was blowing smoke out that same breather.

any ideas what could have caused that? I basically have the head off the motor now, assuming it was a valve seal, im replacing all the top end gaskets. also I realized after I had everything thing apart i didnt set the first cylinder to TDC does that really matter as long as I marked the cams and everything? if anyone has any other ideas or tips please let me know id love to hear them and would greatly appreciate it.

OneBadTurboCRV

Could be a valve stem seal but it sounds more like a cracked ring land or broken/worn rings. Before you wasted your time you should have done a leak-down test or at minimum a compression test. You could put it back together and have the same problem. It is always best to exhaust all your options trying to figure out what is wrong before you tear it apart. Unless you know exactly what the problem is of course.

ef-hatchcrap

Sounds like bad or broken rings

91CivicTurbo

would bad rings push oil thru the valve cover tho? I tested compression in it last week and 2 cylinders had 200psi and the other 2 had about 140. The spark plug on the 3rd cyl from the timing belt was excessively oily everytime i took it out, and when the car died the other day the entire hole that leads down to the spark plug was filled with oil. I got a head gasket set with the car and someone said its probably the valve seals so i guess I just went with that

bprsk8r4272

i agree with them take it apart and check the ring lands/rings

OneBadTurboCRV

It is called blow by... Google it since you have never heard of it.

91CivicTurbo

Alright i looked it up.. it doesnt say anything about putting exhaust out of the valve cover tho, it explains the opposite, that air is sucked into the valve cover.

I got the head off tho and the cylinder walls arent scarred in any way they look perfect. in order to look at the bottom end id probably have to pull the motor wouldnt i?

91CivicTurbo

think a bad pcv is possible?

TunerN00b

Blowby is when part of the intake charge makes it past the piston rings, into the crankcase, which is connected to the valve area through the oil drain passages, hence exhaust gas leaving the valve cover.

There is always some blowby, which is why cars have PCVs and valve cover vents.

abnaasefmb

i got $20 on cracked ringlands. stock pistions?

godruler

listen to TunerNoob he hit the nail on the head. your rings are gone causing excessive crank case pressure pushing the oil out the top as already explained.

91CivicTurbo

i believe theyre stock pistons, wouldnt that be something that happens over time tho? not just all of a sudden?

90RENOsedan

its from boosting on stock internals. you've got blown out rings. the people telling you whats wrong with your car are right. its time for a re-ringing.

D16SiHatch

that's not at all what the problem is. you can absolutely run boost on stock internals. who knows what kind of shape the motor was in before he purchased the car. he already said it was burning oil pretty bad before this happened so it was certainly not very healthy. at this point we don't know the quality of the tune it had, or how much boost was being ran.

op: rings are toast. rebuild and retune.

90RENOsedan

i just wasn't very descriptive on what i meant. its probably running on a missing link, and an fmu. i think he said he bought the car already boosted. so it's probably been revved to the end of its life.

91CivicTurbo

alright, but is it something that happens suddenly? like I said 2 cylinders had 200psi and the other 2 had about 140psi the day before this happened. I just dont want to go thru the work of pulling the whole motor, nor do i have the desire to dump all kinds of money into the car..(its getting to be snowmobiling season) i bought the car from a friend who needed money, all i did was drive it a week and put it up for trade on craigslist with plans on getting a crotch rocket out of it. no one thinks it could just be the valve seals or pcv or anything else that would make that happen?? also when i was driving it i noticed the air/fuel gauge was reading almost as rich as it can get right before it happened

thanks for all the help

OneBadTurboCRV

If you want to keep going against us then do what you want and just replace the valve stem seals. It is your car, your money, and your time. This is about as close to bench racing as I want to go. You gave no specific details, no pictures, and no hints of mechanical knowledge. All we have to go off of is what has been given and if you look ^^^ up ^^^ you will see it is not a lot.

Either way tell somebody where you live, and maybe if you are lucky, someone will take it off your hands for some money. Don't expect to get anything out of that Hunk now... Especially since the head is off and it wasn't even running prior to the head being taken off. I will come get it for $500...

91CivicTurbo

Well geez im not trying to be a ***** im just trying to get away without doing anything that isnt absolutely required. Its like if your car wont shift and everyone tells you its the trans because the trans goes out on that kind of car at xxxxx miles on average and really its just a solenoid. if it smokes a little and doesnt have perfect compression thats fine with me, I just know a lot of people on forums are die hard for the type of car that the forum supports and are like oh yeah Id just rebuild it and re tune it, to me is a lot of money for a toy I dont plan to keep. i dont need another project. Im just trying to see if anyone else on here has had the same problem and fixed it with anything else, I had a few people call me when i had it on craigslist for $3000 and I explained what happened and 2 of them said they bet its the valve stem seals, im sure youve been there and wanted something to be a 2 day deal not a month long project

dephtone

There is a 60psi difference between 2 out of the 4 cylinders and you are wondering why you have blow-by?

A healthy motor, there should only be a max of 5-10 psi difference between each cylinder. Since there is a 60 psi difference, you just got to bite the bullet and rebuild it, or sell it off cheap because it will need new rings at minimum. Possibly new pistons if the actual ringland itself broke.

91CivicTurbo

im sure i could easily do better than 500 how it sits the seats are almost worth that..but i want it to run good so i can get the most out of it. It doesnt have a singe ding that Ive seen, not single bit of rust or paint bubbling

JDM T3/T4 turbo kit, brand new tires, tinted windows, precision injectors, AEM cams, skunk2 racing clutch, JDM tranny, boost gauge, air/fuel mixture gauges turns 8 different colors, 3 inch greddy exhaust all the way back no cat, car is white with black rims FLORIDA CAR NO RUST AT ALL rides nice, shifts perfect no grinding of gears. aftermarket Pioneer speakers.blue carpet, Has two leather bucket racing seats

OneBadTurboCRV

Not to be rude but you obviously got taken by your "friend"... That car has a lot of low quality/non-expensive parts, let alone the "AEM camshafts" and the "Skunk2 Clutch" that just made me giggle.

Either way it is your car. Since you are still having a hard time getting the mechanical side of it... Valve stem seals will not cause a 60psi difference between cylinders. All the valve stem seals do is keep oil from pouring down the guides into the cylinder. The valve seat is what keeps air from getting pushed past the valves. To have that kind of difference you have one or a combination of the following: blown head gasket, cracked head, cracked/bent valves, bad valve seats, cracked cylinder wall, cracked/broken piston ring, broken ring land, worn rings, ect.. But that pretty much sums it up.

Now back to your problem... You have oil spraying out everywhere and some bad valve stem seals don't have access to enough oil to just spray out of the valve cover. Most of the time bad seals don't work that way anyways... It goes into the cylinder. So what could make oil blow out then?

Pressure is needed. Where is positive pressure created in the motor (no not the turbo I said IN the motor)??? In the cylinders of course; as you saw 200 psi on some of your cylinders... Are you running 200 psi of boost by chance? (LMFAO)... anyways when that pressure is allowed to go past the rings in great amount it pressurizes the crankcase. The pressure WILL escape out of the point of the least resistance. Instead of blowing out a seal it is coming out of the valve cover.

Well how does that explain the reason for oil coming out? Simple, the block has open gallies for the oil to flow back to the oil pan after it has run it's course in the head. As the oil is traveling down the air pressure is going up and out. Overpowering and picking up some of the oil as it goes and pushing it off parts as well right out the valve cover. Did you happen to notice if your dipstick was not all the way in the tube? Another sure sign of blow-by.

Rings typically wear over time but things break right away. You said it yourself that you were beating on it when it happened why the hell could it not just up and break? Especially if it had a **** tune... It would be different if your engine was using oil or coolant through a head gasket because the signs would be different.


Sorry if some of the grammar is bad, but I am on my iPhone...

dephtone

Bad grammar or not, holy explanation batman *claps&cheers*

If he doesn't get it at this point, yikes. OP please READ the above not skim it.

lulz...that is all.

90RENOsedan

jdm turbo kit? aem cams? if you're not into this car, then try to get rid of it. if you love it, you'll put the work it takes to get it back up to running good.

140psi is already pretty low compression as it is.

91CivicTurbo

well to be honest the guy isnt a friend hes a druggie who needed a fix at 3am and kept calling me offering me the car for lower and lower because it needed wiring(new battery cable ran and some other ghetto wiring under the hood that i re did) and needed the starter fixed and he knows nothing about cars.

its actually been at 7lbs since i got it (i didnt get the 200 psi joke) but whats the matter with the parts on it?... are they not as good as stock parts or what? i understand how the blow by works from reading about it im just trying to examine EVERY possibility.

you guys are right tho the low compression was an issue, i didnt think anything of it because im used to working on sleds where 130psi is perfect. I guess Ill just go the rest of the way and tear the motor apart. at least now ill be able to say its got a rebuilt motor when i sell it

90RENOsedan

honda's are super high compression motors usually. skunk2 makes suspension parts mostly, and aem doesn't make cams, as far as i know. i could be wrong. you shoud probably get a set of rings, a headgasket, and an oilpan gasket, and re ring the car, and hope the ring lands aren't toast.