jhholloway

I have a newly build b20. Just rolled the 1,000 ml mark today. When I got off of work, I pulled the dip stick and it was low on oil... almost entire quart low.

Two weeks ago, I changed oil at 500 mls. I drove 2 hours to Va beach and back in with out stopping. I did not notice any oil loss. (I was looking for problems, but that's not why I went) Now, It's been about a week and 300 mls since then.

I did a compression test today. it was 129 131 129 130 (4321) So that was perfect with basically NO variance between cylinders. When I pulled the plugs, they were all burning a little hot. So in this case, it's good that they weren't black or gooky, so it leads me to believe that it's not burning oil too terribly bad.

There is no smoke, unless I have just shifted at a relatively high RPM. (not under normal driving conditions)

*I have not seen any leaks*


So I welcome any input and advise. Would a leak down test be useful? I didn't think so b/c the compression was good.



details on the block:
type r replicas 11:1 /new valves/ bearings/ springs/ retainers/ cams/ oil pump/ water pump/ head gasket/ cam seals/ main seal...

basically every i can think of BUT NOT crank,cam caps, sleeves, rods, and valves seals
(first thought once i did the compression test was, "should have replaced those valve seals")

The Guy

Take a look at the valve seals. May be your issue. It might be letting in the oil through the intake. Unless I read incorrectly....

Fabrik8

What kind of rings are you using, and what kind of hone did you get when it was rebuilt? Also, what type of oil are you using, and has the ECU been tuned for that engine?

It's possible that the valve seals were damaged when the valves were changed, but a quart of oil through the valve seals is a huge amount over that small of a mileage (especially without seeing a lot of smoke). It would be rare for all the seals to be damaged badly enough for that, and you'd normally have smoke on startup because oil will pool in the cylinders while the engine sits. So I'm not really sure if the symptoms point to that problem.

Regardless, the oil has to be going somewhere, and because this is a fresh build I would always suspect a break-in problem with the rings and hone. Driving the the 200 mile trip with no oil loss isn't necessarily an indicator of anything, mostly because oil consumption can change depending on whether the engine is warmed up or not. If you drove two hours each way with a hot engine, the oil loss might be totally different than a bunch of around town driving starting from a cold engine. It's also possible that you've done enough break-in that now you're starting to have oil control problems with the rings for whatever reason.

Engine break-in is some kind of voodoo as far as I'm concerned, but conventional wisdom often says that it's bad to run at fairly constant RPM during break-in. Maybe that couple hour trip didn't do good things for your oil control. I'm just throwing around possibilities...

Just to further complicate the issue, a compression test won't necessarily tell you much about oil loss problems. You can have perfect compression and bad oil control because the things that do a lot of the oil control don't have anything to do with cylinder sealing.

jhholloway

I am using new rings that I purchased from Honda. Sorry, I do not know all the rebuild terms, but the honing device used had three stones and the whole unit spin around.
Well the compression test was to check if the rings were bad. I am using 10w 30(was told to use for first 3-5k then I could switch to synthetic). Yes the ECU is tuned, Shue did it for me.

Fabrik8

I was talking about the type of hone, not the type of honing tools.

What type of cylinder wall finish did the machine shop do; like a plateau hone, etc...?

colocho19

just throwing it out there, it could be a fail headgasket... drain ur coolant and check to see if there is oil gunk in the coolent...

colocho19

also is this all motor or turbo? cuz if its turbo then you might have a turbo seal leak making ur oil scape from there...

jhholloway

Well, i honestly do not know. My father is a mechanic of +30 years, and they have a small machine shop at his work. I would guess that they did what ever was most convenient. (they typically work more on small engines. Not that 2.0 is large, but you know what I mean)

Fabrik8

What does he have to say about the oil consumption?

jhholloway

He's still at work and I can't really talk been working 14 hour days the last couple. He only a moment free and called me. Told him that I was running a compression test and checking pvc valve and tb/intake for retained oil or some sign of it. Off the top of his head, He said that it was a lot of oil to be burned through the valve seals, but was probably the issue.