Can rings be bad if compression is good?

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Originally posted by Bullet:

quote:

Originally posted by Jimbo:
Bad intake valve stems/guides/seals certainly can lead to heavy oil consumption. High vacuum conditions, that is, idle and engine braking will tend to pull oil down the intake guides. Bad oil control rings will merely use more oil proportional to rpms. I notice a lot of complaints about oil consumption on late model US engines, such as the Ford V-10, Olds Aroura V-8 and GM 4.3 V-6.

This is correct, although the seals may be faily new, they would be a little on the high side of tolarances. This is cheap if you can do it yourself. I did mine buy pulling all plugs, putting rope down the plug hole and rotating the engine until it bined.

On a side note, was this short block assembled with chrome rings? If so, it may take that kind of milage to seat the rings.

On a side note, remove the pcv valve hose and plug it and let the engine breath into the air. if oil consumption decreases them you have a pcv problem.


I bought new valve seals, so I will give that a try. I believe ARE uses moly rings.
 
I was goign to do a compression test today, my mechanic says, unless the rings are in terrible shape, there no way u can really tell
 
http://dodgetruckworld.tenmagazines...111910-s-got_my_plenum_gasket_replaced_w_pics Check out this link. Some Dodges have a problem with the plenum gasket leaking causing the engine to suck oil directly into the intake and can cause a lot of consumption. I'm assuming GM uses a similar setup. I doubt bad valve seals would cause that much consumption. I suspect this or something closely related is what's causing your problem.
 
ARE I was not aware that they built your shortblock! They have the rep of building some FUBARED LS1's. The internals will now be my 1st guess.
 
What oil weight and brand are you using?

If you are doing 3k/3mo changes, then you'll be able to play with different oil brands and weights until you find one that doesn't disappear quickly.

Toss in a bottle of VSOT or Schaeffers #132.
 
Compression readings can be misleading. Did you squirt oil in the cylinder and retest? Use 50wt and squirt some in the spark plug hole and retest. The heavy oil should seal the ring temporarily. If you compression readings increase it is the rings, if it doesn't it's the valve seals. Also, a leakdown test is the best way to check.
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SD
 
I have been using Chevron Delo 15W/40. One clue that tells me the engine is seriously FUBARED is that switching to a heavier weight oil did nothing to decrease consumption at all.

Most of the parts in my engine are new, and with ARE's rep, I gotta believe the bottom end is the culprit here.

So guess what? I decided this was the perfect excuse to have TSP (Texas Speed & Performance) build me a new 408 stroker engine! I have some friends who are dealers for TSP and they are selling me the motor at their cost- which was too good of a deal to pass up.

So thanks for all the help and suggestions, guys! I am hoping for 500 RWHP with the new engine. I will report my results back to BITOG.

This is clearly of case of, "When given lemons, make lemonade!"

Please give me suggestions for a good break-in oil to use, and OCI suggestions for a new race engine- I want this one to lead a long, healthy life!
 
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