I purchased this 2000 Si from an older man not too long ago. Took great care of the car never beat on it. It started burning oil after I got it and continued to get worse. I hardly ever get on the car and when I do I know how to treat it. The car is still bone stock.

Me being concerned I went to my local import guy around here. He has a great reputation for doing good work. He did a compression and leak down test and here were my results.

Results are (engine cylinder 1 thru cylinder 4): 160 80 120 180
Leak down test: 20% 80% 80% 40%

This car runs great. I've been in other civics with b16's and mine seems to run great. It just smokes like hell now. His plan is for my to do a gsr longblock swap rather than rebuild it because he says there are too many chances of finding things inside the motor that also need to be replaced and it will get too pricey for my budget. I trust him a lot. But I talked to another mechanic and he told me if it was that bad it shouldn't hardly idle. I was also told by the first mechanic the motor now won't last long so I should stay around town and baby the car.

So how should I expect this motor to run? If I didn't have a rearview mirror I wouldn't have ever guessed there was a problem.

TIA
Joe

 

Aren't the cylinder compression and leak down test results somewhat inconsistent with one another?

And the leak down test is usually done to reveal where compression is lost and thereby where the problem is. Did he give you this key information?

What color smoke is seen in the exhaust?

Compression test --> having two adjacent cylinders (2 and 3) with low compression hints to a blown head gasket.

 

Interesting I am in the same boat, burning oil, smoke has not gotten too bad, but black staining on the bumper.

I have been adding oil and running for quite a bit of time like this, if I pound into vtec then it will burn much more quickly.

As for running, it runs fairly good considering, but it does feel down on power.

Just as a side note, honda's are like boxers that have been down but get up again.

I was reading on the itr board one guy bought a used itr thinking it was in great shape drove it from ny to chicago, he noticed a lot of oil on the back bumper and had to add oil on the way, car seemed to drive ok.

When check compression one cylinder was dead, goes to show you a honda can run on 3 cyl and still seem ok.

 

head gasket, rings, or valve seals maybe?