I recently installed a 96' type R B18C in my 94' GSR which had been sitting up for quite a while prior to install and showed signs of having had water standing in the valve area with a bit of light rusting. My mechanic and I agreed that more than likely the rust was from pressure washing prior to shipping because the valve area was really clean otherwise and we went ahead and flushed it and I have run three sets of oil through it but am having serious oil burn to the tune of a quart a week per 150 to 200 miles. Compression is perfect and I have done a couple of overnight soaks on the cylinders with Kreen to free up any stuck rings or dirty valve guides and such and they are completely clean and #3 was the only one showing a carbon/oil burn spot on top along with burnt oil residue on the spark plug base.Engine gets great gas miledge and there is only a light dusting of burnt oil residue on the exhaust pipe but it does seem to hiccup and miss just a wee bit when first started in the morning almost like it runs cold or something and then gets better as it warms up. It also makes a slight clatter and hiccup as I decellerate out of VTEC which leads me to believe that it is valve related.
I'm trying to decide if I need to replace the valve guides or maybe there are some valves that aren't seated right due to the rust/corosion issue (which I thought might have worked itself out by now after having run it for a couple of thousand miles) and i just need to replace them because they are bad. Or could it be a bad oil seal around spark plug 3? I'm running Castrol 0W-30 Euro synth in it right now but have run Edge 10W-40 and 5W-30 prior with the 40W burning a little slower but not by much. Any wisdom and suggestions you guys could offer would be greatly appreciated since I need to get to the bottom of what this problem is and get it remedied because at $10 a bottle for the oil it's getting too expensive!

 

what is the compression? that engine should have min warm compression of 240lbs per cylinder with a healthy one in the 250-260 range

if it's down around 210 you have ring issues, may have valve issues and the engine will have to come apart

it's a crapshoot buying jdm engines. some are in good shape, some are beat on

if it's burning that much oil you almost certainly have one cylinder with a cracked ringland or a guide that's extremely worn. i can only imagine the cloud of smoke it makes in vtec

 

if compression is 'perfect', then you've got either valve stem seal problems, or worn guides. (or both)

 

you could run that engine with no valve seals and it wouldn't burn a quart every 150 miles

guides are possible but if something caused that much wear on the guides it would be absolutely amazing if the rings didn't get hammered too

 

That's the weird thing NO smoke and engine has no leaks!

 

what were your compression numbers?

a quart every 200 miles if it's not leaking really means 1 thing.

the spark plugs also should be sticky coal black

if oil is leaving the engine it's either burning or leaking, no where else for it to go