Well, it really dosen't seem to be leaving the car elsewhere, besides the tailpipe. It can put out some pretty resptectable clouds.. The ring question.. yes they sound good, but I've had an email or two raising the possibility of compression rings being good, (with good test pressures) but the oil control ring worn or shot, allowing burning to occur anyway. Sound possible? The plugs (#3 and 4) are pretty oil fouled, but not so bad they stop firing.. so far.IMO: 1) That's too much oil to be burned in such a short period of time. It would be smoking like John Houseman in a Smith Barney invests in Phillip Morris commercial. 2) The compression is too high for it to be rings 3) I agree with the opinion that seals couldn't leak that much oil. If they did you'd have under 100lb compression. 4) The plugs would oil foul and the car wouldn't even run. Just giving you some things to look at before you rip the engine apart. - -Peter
I have been reliably informed that valve guides are not meant to seal the oil passages. That's what valve stem seals are for, so I'd suggest that you look into those first. Also the smoke on lift off and reapplication of the throttle indicates worn stem seals (perhaps non-existent). Now my imperial measures are a bit rusty, but a quart is about 1200ml's, right? If there is no evidence of external leaks, your seals must be very bad indeed to leak that much oil every 160kms. I'd suspect that the oil control rings are shot as well, you may still get good compression, but the oil consumption would escalate. Looks like it's rebuild time for you. Another test for stuffed rings is to take off the breather tube at the top of the motor, and run the motor to see how bad the fumes are. Having just rebuilt my race car engine because of ring failure, there is bucketloads of oil smoke and fumes coming out when the rings don't seal, and very little (if any) when the rings are new.I have looked at the blowby, it dosen't seem to have much positive pressure.. Lots of recirulating air, like a speaker port with a strong bass note playing.. back and forth but no real continious flow, or blue smoke, for that matter.. BTW, a US Quart is 946 ml.
Ah, I did check this.. I'd noticed a screwy thing earlier.. the drain hose to the dipstick/sump, made a 180' loop up by the separator, around the cold air vent, effectively creating a trap! And sure enough, it was filled with loads of gunky crap.. After much cleaning with degreaser, both the hose and separator were fairly clean again, and back on.. minus the creative hose layout. But, since there isn't a whole lot of blowby, it may not help all that much. Remains to be seen.. I'm watching the oil level and my odometer... I also seem to see less consumption than my first estimate.. possibly a quart every 200 miles. Gee, I've gone from unbelivable to just terrible! ;-)Could be any number of serious things......BUT before you pull it to bits it is just possible you have a terminally blocked engine breather circuit which is allowing the block to get pressured up and pushing the oil past the pistons and out through the exhaust valves.