Last week my 416, with a Honda engine drank 4.5 litres of oil in 500 miles!! I am having the car serviced tomorrow but have recently had the sump tightened as a nut and bolt was missing! Garage says that the amount of oil loss is not consistent with a leak from either the sump or crank seal. Spoke to my local engine specailist and he said that it sounds like piston rings and that the Honda engine doesn't respond to Re-Ringing all that well! At first I thought valve stem oil seals but there is not one drop of smoke; or is the CAT preventing this.
Is it worth a new motor? I paid £750 for it with 96,500 on the clock.
Excuse the poor technical knowledge I may have; I'm more of and aircraft man!
Thank You

For an engine to use 4.5 litres of engine oil in 500 miles you would either see it as smoke out the back or as pools of oil underneath. There is no other explanation.

Could it only be excreting oil under pressure during running? What is the running pressure at 3500 rpm? 65/70psi? Drive is clean and so is exhaust!!

could it be a crank-case breather blocked forcing the oil out under pressure? happened to me once with no oil on drive way and clean exhaust.. i unblocked the breathers and all was merry after that..

Originally posted by dleggett
Last week my 416, with a Honda engine drank 4.5 litres of oil in 500 miles!!.
Spoke to my local engine specailist and he said that it sounds like piston rings and that the Honda engine doesn't respond to Re-Ringing all that well! At first I thought valve stem oil seals but there is not one drop of smoke; or is the CAT preventing this.
Is it worth a new motor?

Thank You

I've done a few SOHC engines that were using oil - including one for a family member that was using 1/2 gallon of oil per tank of petrol.
It had done over 130k miles 2 years ago, we stripped it, bores were A1 despite the mileage, bores were well within tolerance and the original hone marks were clearly visible :) so we honed the bores and reringed and reshelled it.
As a precaution I had the valve guides replaced although they weren't bad at all, and rebuilt with all new seals and gaskets.
Total cost was about £300 all in - including all the machining work obviously this was all my own labour :).

Since that time the car has used less than a 1/2 pint of oil between oil 6k mile changes, - most of the time it doesnt use any - car now has 165K on the clock.

HTH

Mark

Interesting!

Could be a 'fault' in the initial running-in process, perhaps?

Dave

Anyone who knows me will know that I am also a big CRX fan - See new project in sig :)

The SOHC engine is the same D16A6 as fitted to the Honda CRX in the US and the oil control subject has been extensively covered on the CRX forums.

It is nearly always caused by infrequent oil changes or use of inferior quality oils - the contaminants in the oil start to coat the oil rings resulting in them getting gummed up after considerable mileage they start to stick - resulting in deceased oil control and therefore high oil consumption. - Yet the engine internals remain in remarkably good condition
Re-ringing is normally all that is necessary and the engines will do extraordinary mileages on the original pistons - 220-250k mile 1988 CRX's are very common and can still fetch $5000 in basically std condition when up for sale

The yanks use "The ATF trick" (http://crx.honda-perf.org/faq/data/5.html) to unstick the rings - be warned it is only about 40% effective from what I can ascertain - but for some people it can save a lot of money - dont do it in the street it produces enormous clouds of smoke !

Otherwise its conventional strip, hone and re-ring I'm afraid


Mark

"This is an extrememly messy job for the shade tree mechnaic. At one point, while trying to soak up the ATF from the cylinders (as per Rodger's advice) I slowly cranked the engine over with a socket on the crank pulley. Well it obviously wasn't slow enough because a geyser of red fluid shot out of cyl. #1 hit the top of the underside of the hood and split with half falling into my hair and the other half the entire engine bay. Needless to say, it was very messy and my parents were the happiest......"

These guys are crazy! :lol: :lol: