Bought a car about 6 months ago and its been burning some serious oil, currently have the head off of the car and getting a parts list together. Is burning about 1 quart of oil every 300-500 miles and smokes a little bit, more so with WOT.

Before tear down the compression was 150-155 all across 4 cylinders with alot of blow-by. No check engine lights and passed the 15 mph smog but failed the 25 mph smog with the car on the dyno here in California.

Previous owner had a shop rebuild the engine 15-20k miles ago with total seal rings

engine:

94 vtec h22a1 with jdm type s pistons total seal rings 11:1 compression. Skunk2 titanium valves, retainers and springs.

With the head torn down the code on the block is a B. The cylinder walls look pretty good with no scratches where my fingernail would catch. The shop honed the cylinder walls before installing the total seal rings but this was done in 2005 with the shop going under 6 months later.

What im thinking is the rings never seated hence creating the oil burning problem but im not an expert and looking for more advice. Currently looking to replace the Total Seal rings with standard bore oem rings and and oem head gasket. Measured the cylinders with a digital caliper and came up just short of oem specs then the standard rings. Questioning if the shop ever did hone the walls.

Should I replace anything else besides the rings and head gasket to make sure the oil burning goes away?

 

The valve seals are not leaking?

The FRM sleeves are supposedly very difficult to hone properly, that could definitely have been your issue.

 

valve seals

 

In all likely hood the block was not honed correctly or at all. As old as FRM is ,(Porsche has used it for years) there are still MANY shops incapable of properly servicing the blocks. Pull the block and send it out.Do some research and find a proper machine shop in your area. Inspect the valve guide seals for hardness or cracking. And def go with OEM rings.

 

I am going to throw in the fact that they could have just done a **** poor job of installing the rings, or that they never got seated correctly. That, and the valve seals could definitely be a problem as well.

 

Dude I went through the SAME exact thing, bought my car with about 176k miles, previous owner had it rebuilt at 159k, new everything, guy was about 18 or so (his dad had it rebuilt) anyway I figured it would be a pretty solid engine but I had to add a quart of oil every other tank of gas, when mine would crank up it would smoke pretty good then too, I assumed that when they rebuilt it they used inferior parts (not honda valve stem seals) and the previous owner being so young probably whipped the car right out of the shop and hit vtec as fast as he could, I also had a compression test ran at the dealership and it checked out good, they were stumped to where all my oil was going, I ended up swapping the bottom end out and the valve stem seals about a month ago and everything is fine now but I would say a combo of bad valve stem seals and no break in period for sure

 

thanks everyone.....ordered all new valve stem seals, oem piston rings and an oem head gasket......I will update this once it is rebuilt

 

well I had to order some new pistons and I think I found out why it was burning so much oil

 

when you did you compression check did you have the throttle wide open? i had to ask because i checked mine one time on my lude and forgot to do that. and it was like 150 155 all the way across. then i remembered and i came back as like 183 all the way across. but ya that piston is gone is that the oil glan