burning oil

Is the smoke black, blue or white? If black, it is oil; blue is gas; white, of course, is water.

If the smoke is more blue than black, I would think it has more to do with your fuel injection than your rings.

It does sound like you have oil passing by the rings. When you let the engine slow the car down, it draws oil up past the rings and it kind of pools there. When you hit the throttle the oil is then passed to the exhaust system.

Put a quart of Marvel Mystery Oil in the crank case. If your rings are gunked up the MMO may dissolve it and fix your problem. It's a $2.50 gamble.

We use it in aircraft engines to help keep deposits down.

Dave

Jeff L>

It seems this has stirred up a bit of interest.

If you are decelerating (foot off going down hill) the vacuum is very high in the inlet manifold. This tends to draw oil down the inlet valve guides when they are worn. When you accelerate this oil is then carried into the combustion chamber and burnt.

If the oil burning is occurring when you are accelerating up a hill or for an extended period, the excess oil sprayed onto the cylinder walls (the thrust side - for lubrication) may not be cleared away by the piston and rings because of wear. This oil is then burnt.

Decelerating with burning as you accelerate is valve guide wear. Long acceleration oil burning is worn rings.

Pooling of oil does not occur within the combustion chamber at all.

Regards

Chris

Dave wrote:

and, by the way, blue is oil, not fuel. Black smoke is partially unburnt fuel in the exhaust.

For everones information it turned out to be a breather problem. oil had colleced in the pipe and little drops werre finding there way into the plenium chamber and thus into the inlet manifold. a good clean sorted the problem.