History: I was having oil buring problems with my mini-me. I originally had burned a valve in the A6 head, and this prompted mini-me. I rebuilt the A6 head while the Z6 was on the car.

I pulled off the head:




Cylinder three the head looks much blacker than the rest. This lead me to think it was the rings.

So I pulled out piston 3



It doesn't look bad to me, but I don't know what to look for. It doesn't look too black, but what are rings supposed to look like? Are the oil rings supposed to be pushed out, like the compression rings?

 

They should push out to make a tight seal around the piston wall.

 

It is a bit hard to see in the photo, but the lower rings are barely pushed out, if at all. Much less than the upper rings. I can assume they are shot then?

 

oil scrapers dont "push out" as far as compression rings.

 

Hmmm... These rings seem to fit perfectly in the cylinder. Tight, but doesn't really take any pressure to get them in. I tried sliding the piston back in a tiny bit with only the oil rings on and a ring compressor was not needed. Well I hope the rings are the problem, as I have to replace them now!

 

they still need to be compressed to fit in the bore, so if they are weak then they are in need pf replacement.

 

inspect the top of your cylinder bore and feel for a lip on the sleeve. thats what was wrong with mine. so i bored .10 over and that didnt fix so then .20 and it was almost there and .30 over took care of it.

 

when I took out the pistons on my old d15b8 the rings on #1 fell apart in my hand in a bunch of pieces the second the piston came out. What you have isn't that bad, but may still need replacing.

 

31flavr... How much oil was it burning with the rings totally trashed? I am going through a quart every 750 miles or so. I want to try and figure out if this could be rings only, or if there is another problem?

 

sounds like the rings are stuck in the lands. common with high mileage. that would expalin the piston fiting witout comp. the rings

 

Didn't feel stuck actually. I could rotate the oil rings easily. Maybe they came unstuck when I pulled them out? I did notice the spacing of the gaps was totally off spec, the two oil rings were 5 degrees apart or so. Engine has 166K on it.

 

I would get new rings and/or if you want to, hone for better seal. Also, the oil could be leaking from other places like the valve seals, stem and rings. So, Take your pick.

 

I have already done some head work. Did the stem seals, lapped the valves... So I hope this is the last leak... Never know though, this is my first attempt at all this so I feel pretty noob about it all.

Is there any way to tell my head work went OK? Any way I can do at home without a pressure test?

Thanks all!

 

About a quart every 2000 miles?? Problem is I didn't know my car burned oil, because my friends "forgot" to tell me that until after I pulled the bad rings out (because I never looked behind my car), so that prolly led to the downfall of the engine, because I NEVER added oil. It was a POS anyways so I didn't really care.