I finally broke down and took the R into a reputable shop to get the engine opened up and re-ringed (what we figured it would need). I've posted several times about oil consumption and the last 5-6 months it has gotten as bad as about a quart of oil every 100-200 miles. This is staying out of VTEC almost completely and the back of my car looks like a freaking oil spill. Anyway, I wanted to do the work or at least be involved in the work (batoutahell is the man for offering his time) but in the end I decided to cough up standard service rate prices (ouchy) and have a professional do it. I've considered selling the ITR a lot lately so I figured having official records would be better than "my buddy and I did it in his garage" papers when selling it.

ANYway, I'm in Cali right now for business and got a call from the shop owner today and his first question was, "have you been using any oil additives??" to which I replied no. The only thing I've ever used was CD2-Max and that was ONLY on the last oil change to see if I could slow down the consumption (it did not). Before that it's always been Mobile-1 10w30 and in the last 1-1/2 years Castrol GTX non-synthetic and always Honda oil filters. The reason he asked was that apparently (and thankfully) the rings and cylinder walls were in great shape (I had good compression numbers before) but the valve seals were completely shot. He said they looked like valve seals on a car that had extremely high mileage -- all hard and dried up or something. So everything has been replaced and I should be good to go, and they went ahead and did the rings because they had the pistons out for inspection.

So my question is, WTF, how do valve seals go rotten on a car with 60K miles? And it's been eating oil since I got it with 9600 miles on it almost 4 years ago this March. It's slowly been consuming more and more every year, but I'd say it was "excessive" oil consumption from the beginning. Would poor break-in affect valve seals? I thought rings would be the thing to go from that.

 

What was the compression and or leak down test results before and after you did the rings?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Bbasso &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">What was the compression and or leak down test results before and after you did the rings?</TD></TR></TABLE>

220 across, never did leak down. I don't know if they've done any post tests or if they plan to, they were just putting everything back together today when I talked to them.

 

Ive heard through a few Honda dealers that for some reason ITRs blow valve stem seals real easy. Don't know if it is true but that's what I was told by Honda techs.

 

Is replacing valve stems expensive? What does this entail?

 

entails whatever needs to be done to get to the valves to take them out.

and replace the seals

 

so the rings were fine, and it was all because of the valve seals?

 

honda generally runs a pretty loose valve stem to guide clearance... i wouldn't say it's required for high(er) rpm motors, but it is a general rule of thumb. there are benefits to this, at the expense of higher wear on valve stem seals.

personally, i'd prefer to run a O-ring style seal... i'm not aware however of anyone that has an off the shelf guide/o-ring for b-series heads.

update your oil consumption after you put some miles on the motor....

 

This is an interesting finding. I remember 4 years ago when we first ran at HPT & you were smoking like a bbq pit back then.

I've just started spitting out the black crap in the last year, so I guess it's time to freshen up my head too

 

I you wouldn't mind answering this, I would like to know what the cost of replacing the valve seals was? I had the same problem that you are having and was told many times that it was the valve seals by many people. I would like to know for future knowledge.

Thanks alot in advance.

 

Just a wild guess, is it possible that the head is not original?

The seal might go bad, but not starting at 9600 miles?? If the rings were in great shape, we can't really say that the motor was screwed up during break-in.

 

Its not that expensive to replace valve seals. But while you are in there, not a bad idea to get a valve job as well. I think I paid $180 from a local shop the first time they did my head. I was expecting much worse.

 

thanks

 

I just had my R head re-done and It only cost me about $365 and thats with new valves,seals, and the machine work. Mine was smoking like a freight train before. Not as bad now.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by uncleben &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> Before that it's always been Mobile-1 10w30 and in the last 1-1/2 years Castrol GTX non-synthetic </TD></TR></TABLE>

im betting this didnt help

 

I guess this kind of debunks general rule of thumb that smoking during acceleration means bad rings, and smoking during off-throttle means bad seals. Your car smoked during hard acceleration.

After a bunch of track events, my R started smoking a little when I came hard off-throttle. It turned out my valve seals were wearing, so I replaced them. My ring compression has always been good.

I guarantee you Jeff broke your car in gently. Maybe too gently?

 

I feel your pain with the whole burning oil and having a perma-black bumper thing. Mine burns about a quart every 500 mile.. somewhere around that. My compression is about 165 across. It sucks having the gas prices so high AND having to buy oil. Not to mention having to worry about being low or not. But anyway, for sure update the status on your oil consumption. Hopefully it works out for you.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Batoutahell &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I guess this kind of debunks general rule of thumb that smoking during acceleration means bad rings, and smoking during off-throttle means bad seals. Your car smoked during hard acceleration.

After a bunch of track events, my R started smoking a little when I came hard off-throttle. It turned out my valve seals were wearing, so I replaced them. My ring compression has always been good.

I guarantee you Jeff broke your car in gently. Maybe too gently?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Not really, if you are talking about the seals initially going bad. If the plugs don't show the oil burn it's most likely coming from the exhaust valve stem seals and once they are shot the oil is just leaking into the exhaust ports and going out with the exhaust.

My D16 has a couple exhaust valve stem seals that are shot, cars smokes bad, plugs are clean, pulled the header and oil drips from #3 and #4 ports. I'll be changing the seals soon.

Also you don't need to remove the head to replace the seals. Put the piston at TDC and use a leak down gage and get pressure on the valves and then remove the valve springs and replace the seals.

 

Yup.

Will do, and thanks for the interesting info.

You don't want to know what I paid -- which is the reason I went back and forth so many times on doing it myself with Batoutahell and Budman's help. The quote was originally for replacing rings, bearings, and yadda yadda, all while they were in the engine. I'm guessing they had already dropped the pan, pulled the rods, and yanked the pistons, before looking at the valve seals because he told me they went ahead and did the rings since they had the pistons out. So I'm sure I'm going to pay for all the labor instead of just getting into the head and replacing valve seals (I haven't seen the bill yet).

Head is original (I assume). And the first owner is BlackDragon (does anyone have his contact info, his email got returned to me) and I am sure he broke in the engine the "Honda method" properly and never added any additives or anything funky. The only thing I can think of is that he had some work done that I was not aware of, but there is no service record of it and I would think he would have said something to me.

Always good when someone makes a comment without explanation -- please elaborate.

My plugs had a lot of oil on them. I don't recall seeing oil in the header though when I put everything back to stock months ago.

Interesting. Well I can't wait to see the bill as the original quote for everything was worst-case 19 hours of labor and I was already paying $500 in parts. At least I'm getting a "freshened" engine out of the deal I guess.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Mires &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Ive heard through a few Honda dealers that for some reason ITRs blow valve stem seals real easy. Don't know if it is true but that's what I was told by Honda techs.</TD></TR></TABLE>

That's interesting. After doing a leakdown on my motor with 92k miles (also with a pretty bad oil consumption problem, though not as extreme as a qt/150mi) one of my techs came to that conclusion, also.

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by uncleben &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">My plugs had a lot of oil on them. I don't recall seeing oil in the header though when I put everything back to stock months ago.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I had that too.

Hmm.

In my quest to reduce the oil consumption problem I switched first from mobile 1 5/30 syn to castrol 5/30 to castrol 10/40 and now I'm running 20/50. Oil loss is down significantly though since my switch to 50 weight.

 

to the feel, does it feel sluggish whatsoever apposed to the other wieghts you've used?

there's gotta be a little power loss

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by JUN.R &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">to the feel, does it feel sluggish whatsoever apposed to the other wieghts you've used?

there's gotta be a little power loss</TD></TR></TABLE>

You would think so, but it's not very noticable (I haven't noticed at all to be honest), and I'd trade a few hp not to worry about checking my oil everytime I fill up on gas.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SoCal ITR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

You would think so, but it's not very noticable (I haven't noticed at all to be honest), and I'd trade a few hp not to worry about checking my oil everytime I fill up on gas.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I've been told that the thicker viscosity oil used in DOHC VTEC motors, the higher the oil pressure will be.....almost too high for the motor and oil seals itself. Can anyone shine some light on this?

 

This is all good info

I got a quote for $1300 for the work. Needless to say I'm trying to figure out other options.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by EnjoyTheRideDC2 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">

I've been told that the thicker viscosity oil used in DOHC VTEC motors, the higher the oil pressure will be.....almost too high for the motor and oil seals itself. Can anyone shine some light on this?

</TD></TR></TABLE>

Dunno if it's light I can shine but, I've run 10W60 Agip synthetic since my motor had 10,000 miles on it, currently it has 45,000miles with absolutely no consumption for daily use and autocross, and extremely minimal to no consumption on track for 2 day events. I list minimal as possibly 1/8th of a liter for a 2 day event in warm weather.

I broke it in pretty hard on Honda oil with Honda filters. Vtec after 500 miles and regular weekend autocrosses for the first year/10,000 miles. I started doing DE's after 15,000 miles and by then it had the 10W60 in it. I've used several different filters, OEM, Hamp, Purolator P1's but never checked the oil pressure and never noticed a difference.

Now, my prior/first R I broke in and babied to 5,000 miles on Honda Oil and Filters and then switched to Mobil1 and it just never stopped consuming oil. Not a load but easily 1 quart every 2 - 3,000 miles of easy Daily Driving with No serious abuse, autocrossing or track events and sustained high RPM.

Like I said I'm not shedding any light, just posting up personal experiences.