ok this is the deal.. my engine has been rebuilt 3 times... yes 3 times by the same machine shop. and every time it burns 1 quart of oil every tank of gas. They then think that somehow gas is gettign into my oil so they send a sample test to sunoco labs somwhere and they come back today after waiting 3 weeks and it says excess gas in oil which is thinning it to about 5w-20. What makes me pissed is that i have NOTHING done to my fuel system due to the point that i was going to after the engine was broken in and strong to put a turbo on. But a year and a half later here i am with the same problem i started off with but this time the builders sayign it's my problem now for having " stock car"???? i don't know where to turn..? I just changed my oil and as i was told by sunoco today to drain it and start all over and run 1000 miles and then send the test in again, just in case my builders laced the sample... but how in the hell coudl gas be gettign into my oil when i have a stock fuel system... i don't wanna end up eating this 5 g's i invested. help. what do i do?

 

First thing that comes to mind is blow-by, that'll get gas in your oil. And if your burning a qt of oil every tank, you have leaky rings man, hence the gas in your oil.

 

What is your setup?

 

Yeah, it does sound like blow-by. Try a compression test and to see if anything is not sealing right, like piston rings or valves. You might also want to try putting an oil catch tank in-between the PCV valve and the IM and see how much blow-by is going through that way...

 

Sounds like bad rings to me. Think about it, how else is fuel gonna get mixed up with your oil? I think your mechanic messed up somewhere along the lines when installing the pistons/rings. Ask him what procedures he tooks and which way he aligned the ring gaps to one another. There is a certain way you have to line them up, also ask him if he measured clearances. Do a leak and compression tests and see if anything funny shows up.

 

Since the same shop keeps messing your motor up, I'd tell them to buy me a new one and go some place else. They seem to be the ones messing your car up and now you

 

i have a darton sleeved block with j-e pistons 10-1 eagle rods, stock valvetrain with the crower turbo/nos cams. stock fuel everything

this is the 3rd re-build... I'm almost sure it's blowby. it's gotta be. either that or somthing wrong with the sleeving.

i mean has there been any problems with the stock ecu to dump fuel in like this... my gas milage has not changed... they tried sayign b/c i have one of those surging idles every so often sayign that could be the cause of the problem.. i was like " yea ok"...

keep em coming. i would like to print this out to show them

 

dude that realy sucks, you should post this in forced induction,

but they obviously built the motor wrong. do you know what the a/f fuel ratio is when the car is runing?

my guess is that they set the ring gap wrong, and or set the piston to wall clearence way to loose.

the only way you could be getting that much blow buy is if the cyclinders are egg shapped, or excessively large ring gap, do a compression test, and post up the results, and do a leak down test

 

ok i'll go do a compression test now

 

ok i did the compression test.

starting with the cylinder closest to distrib.
following reading were after car sat for an hour after 100 miles were put on. about 5 turns put on each cylinder test 2 consecutive times

engine still warm

141----141-----141----151


there ya go.

 

You need to do the test with the engine hot, like right after you shut it down. The throttle also needs to be wide open during the test.

 

yea. make sure shes hot and stomp on the throttle while u crank it.

 

I don't know how much help this is - but in my old car (1994 prelude F22A1), the PCV valve was sucking in oil somehow, and eventually led to me running dry on oil and throwing a rod...

I have no clue what a blow-by is, can someone elaborate?

you said you just did a compression test...can those be done at home or is it necesary to go somewhere that has the tools like a shop or something? just curious as I'd like to have one done..

 

Blowby is when the mixture of gas and air seeps past the piston and out of the combustion chamber below the pistions.

As the pistons go up to compress the mixture it seeps between the piston rings and cylinder walls, thus the gas in the oil.

back to the original post:

It does sound like blowby man, I cant think of anything else it could be. Sounds like they did a shitty build or you ended up with some poorly manufactured parts.

 

I've got a fair amount of experience with the burning of oil and the H22A4 series motor.

My car always burned oil... and een when brand new would puff a little blue smoke on startup during cold weather.

Oil analysis was pretty basics and NEVER, even when burning a QT per 1000 miles, showed any fuel or coolant in the oil.

At 124k the engine had 10% blow-by in #1 and 20+% in #4...

The only thing the oil analysis shows was slightly elevated levels of aluminum.

My compression numbers were 215,225,220,225 or so... You've got to do a blow-by test and see WHERE the combustion gases are escaping. If you are lucky, it'll just be bad valve seals... and it'll be $600.00 to get someone to repalce them all on the car.

 

I think you should be looking for a leakdown test (or blowby test?) to actually pinpoint where the problem is in your motor. As they pump air into the cylinder, listen to where the hissing is comming from.

Hissing from dipstick = Bottom end, rings
Hissing from intake = Top end, valves, valve seal on intake side
Hissing from exhaust = Top end, exhaust valves

Chances are its the rings, or worse, an egg shaped cylinder.....

 

600 dollars to do valve seals is the biggest ripoff ive ever fookin heard. I pulled my head and took it to head masters and got new seals, new seats cut, pressure tested, resurfaced, and fully assembled for 149 bucks.

 

$600 is a rip off?

At $75.00 per hour... that's what...7 hours...

Now, if a mechanic has to take the head off... they have to remove pretty much everything on the driver's side and put it back. That's probably 2 to 3 hours work right there.

To take the head off... they'd have to disassemble the cams, and so on to get to the head bolts. Figure 45 mintues to do that and label/layout everything in the proper order so that it's not screwed up on re-assembly.

Then adjust the valves... another 45 minutes or so.

While you're there... you might as well replaced the tensioner, belts, and water pump... unless it was done recently.

Parts are easily a few hundred dollars by themselves....

Even if you don't repalce everything just to be safe... you are still taking about replacing the vavle seals on the car... and that's time consuming (this is what I did). So you get the adapter, blow air into the cyliders one at a time to prevent the valves failing as you disassemble them, replace each and every valve seal, and put the valve assembly back together.

That'd take at least 2 to 3 hours...

Sorry, $600.00 is a fairly good price to have a mechanic do the work for you... and do it right.

 

ok first of all i woudl liek to say that i am not paying anyone else to work on this car.

i just did anouther compression test with the throttle wide open and at least 8 turns 2 consecutive time on each cylinder and got the following:

155-145-150-150

i never failed to mention that my oil turns very dark after about 250 miles. my builders added anouther pcv valve in between the stock one. why? i dunno. they said it " stopped the oil in those lines.

where and how do i do a leak down test?
they keep telling me that gas is being overloaded into the cylinder.... the problem is i have everything STOCK!! Has there been any issues with any stock fuel systems malfunctioning like that? my gas milage is the same....

 

I didn't realize you were in NJ to...

A leak-down test requires a leak-down tester.

This is an air manifold just like the gauges on an air compressor. The first gauge reads the input air pressure and has a dial on it to dial to the pressure you want to start with. The second gauge has an air pressure readout just like the first, but shows you how much are you are loosing.

You attach the unit to a cylinder using a hose just like a compression tester, and dial the cylinder so that the valves are closed on that same cylinder. (You also get someone to hold the crank in place using a crank tool or the crank pulley bolt.)

What you typically do is dial the input to 100 PSI.

Then you read how much air is escaping from the cylinder.

Since you started with 100 PSI, any lose of escaping air with be the actual percent of blow-by (leak) you have.

I did the H22A I recently swapped with and got better than 5% for each cylinder. (It appears that it was actually 98% or better on each, but it's hard to hold the crank without the crank tool while the motor is on a movable engine stand.)

I'm not certain if it can be done with the valve cover on... I assume so, as all you'd do is rotate the engine until you got the maximum values for each cylinder.

 

my 97 is doing the same thing..ive taken mine to the honda dealer they tell me its ether my cam seal or valve seal.

 

ok i just got back from the builders and they told me it is impossible for fuel to get into the oil during blowby and still are sayign that my stock fuel system is the reason why and washed out the rings. i told them i would happily go get the cars fuel system check out, but i need to know what they are goign to do if the problem isn't that and they are getting back to me tommorrow.. this isn't going to be easy. any suggestions? where should i get it checked out. the rings are already done i'm reading 150 at almost every cylinder so what shoudl i do go to a honda dealer and have them test the injectors? they are convinced that gas is leaking from the injector on top of the piston when the car is off or something???

 

bump for my oil burnin buddy

 

where the hell in jersey are you getting your motors built from?
I want to know, to avoid the hell out of them
I had my b16 on my SI built back when I had it at SPI

 

I did it myself... seems to have worked out...