89 Accord Is Now A Two Cycle!!!

[Cap'n Carageous]

I've put 900 miles on my car since the headjob and it's used a quart of oil!! I used to get 3000 miles before I needed half a quart and that was from leaks! I don't see a drop of oil on the floor now. What gives???? BTW way, engine runs good, 34.5 MPG but has a slight vibration that you can feel in the gearshift . Anyone else experienced increased oil consumption after a head rebuild?

[fraza]

chek for smoke out the back of your car, if there is its either the rings are bad or the rings are not positioned properly

[Vanilla Sky]

you didn't seat your rings properly, assuming you touched them.

what work was done to your head? it could be that the valve guides or lalve stems were machined too much, and now too much oil is passing. it could also be that the head was warped when it was unmounted from the block. you could have a defective head gasket.

do what fraza said. if we know there is smoke, we know it's being burned instead of leaked external of the cylinders.

[Cap'n Carageous]

Short block was not touched. Everything looked great. No ridge, no scuffing on the cylinder walls and no piston flop. The head was done by our areas most experienced head guy. 35+ years experience. It's not leaking, or at least it's not getting to the pavement where I park. It isn't smoking unless you push it above 5,000. Tailpipe is very clean for this kind of oil consumption.
This is a curious thing. One of my customers, ( I operate a courier service for AC Delco auto parts) said he had one that did the same exact thing after a headjob. He said it did it for a while then stopped. He didn't know why though.

[Cant Stop]

gotta be burning it

[Vanilla Sky]

is your head torqued down properly? leaking it around or through your distributor? what about the valve cover gasket?

[Cap'n Carageous]

gotta be burning it

Yeah, I had a friend follow me today and he said it was 'slightly' smok'in. It's still odd, because before the headjob it took 3,000 miles at least before it needed oil addition.

[Lester Lugnut]

Pull all the spark plugs. One or more likely have oil on them.

Take the plugs to the machine shop and show 'um what's going on and explain the big increase in consumption after the head job. As mentioned above, the valve guides may be the problem. I suppose it's also possible they didn't get the stem seals on right.

35 yrs. experience means nothing. He could have been having a bad day or for all you know, he let one of his lackies do the work.

If the plugs are clean, look for external leaks after thoroughly steam cleaning engine and driving for a a day or two.

[Vanilla Sky]

i would honestly look at the distributor seal first and foremost.

[Kabuki]

We've seen this after head jobs... A lot of it is that the head nor seals substantally better than before, so any wear on te rings or cylinders is amplified, because nothing leaks past the valves and gasket.

[Cap'n Carageous]

We've seen this after head jobs... A lot of it is that the head nor seals substantally better than before, so any wear on te rings or cylinders is amplified, because nothing leaks past the valves and gasket.

That's kinda what I was thinking too. It's just odd to me that even with that theory it's hard to imagine rings and piston wear just suddenly manifests itself to the point of burning a quart every 900 miles. I mean a leaks a leak, right. Just because it's coming from another place should not make it ten times worse!

I'm gonna do a compression check and a cylinder leakage test to confirm that it's rings.

[AZmike]

We've seen this after head jobs... A lot of it is that the head nor seals substantally better than before, so any wear on te rings or cylinders is amplified, because nothing leaks past the valves and gasket.

I had similar results when I installed a rebuilt head on my Prelude (had an A20A). I tore it back down and honed the bores and replaced the rings and reduced the consumption to almost nothing.

[Cap'n Carageous]

This one is puzzling. Some days it uses a little oil and some days it will use nearly a quart!! (300 miles every day, same route) It also smells VERY gasy when you stop. Like it's leaking or flooding, but it's getting 440 miles per tankful so it can't be leaking much. I don't see any leaks. I think I may have messed up the valve in the charcoal cannister when I de black boxed it.
Another twist, on cold mornings it will fire right up then die within three seconds. You have to turn the engine for about 20 seconds to get it to restart.

[Lester Lugnut]

Pull all four spark plugs. What do they look like?

[Cap'n Carageous]

Pull all four spark plugs. What do they look like?

They look fine. I rerouted the vacuum line for the float bowl vent and teed it into the vacuum secondary vac source and disconnected the vac from the charcoal cannister. The gassy smell is gone but the fuel system seems to be under negative pressure after about a hundred miles or so. I may have to put a vent hole in the gas cap.
Yesterday I had an oil leako el grande that popped up. It was coming from the oil pan hose to the oil/vapor separator. A screw type hoseclamp fixed that. So maybe part of my consumption was from that. It still smokes but doesn't seem as bad. Time will tell. Dang little engine is running great though.

[Lester Lugnut]

Interesting that it smokes and the plugs look fine?

I wonder what the content of the smoke is?

[Cap'n Carageous]

Todays electronic ignition systems can fire a plug in even heavily contaminated combustion mixtures. My Mercedes was burning a quart per 500 miles through the valve guides and the plugs never fouled. And it barely smoked due to the heat in the catalytic converters.

[Cap'n Carageous]

After nearly 15,000 miles since the head rebuild, my oil consumption has stabilized. It is now a quart every 1200 miles or so. I can live with that on an engine that now has 305,000 on the original short block! If you recall I didn't do a complete overhaul because there was no visible wear in the cylinders. I did disturb something, but it appears to be re-sealing itself. Strange but true.

[2oodoor]

Too freaky, true sometimes you do increase compression some when doing a good valve/head job on any motor...if it is an older engine the bottom end may not appreciate the extra sealing. I have not read too much of that as being a characteristic with these Hondas, may be, but not to the degree you first described. Sounds like a pvc crank case vent thing along with valve guides. I suspect also some aftermarket h-gaskets may not be such a good idea. Folks are swearing by OEM sealing for these Hondas. Dude I ran across this post lookin for an answer on my own, just did a head/valve job and smoke is rolling outta from under the exhaust manifold and a little out the tail pipe. I used Rock Gasket Co. gasket set, it looked like a lot of graphite to it. torque to 50 fl lbs, I have seen testimonys about Rock G, but not to much. A local machine shop that does 85 percent of big money race engines around here did the machine work.... OH well, Im gonna make sure to check the guages accuracy and drive it some.