Oil Consumption woes or normality?

[Huw Powell]

Leah and David Mueller wrote:
> 
> Thanks Huw. I would say that it is being burned.  Engine and floor of garage
> are very clean. I will check compression.  Then if that looks reasonable, go
> to the valve seals.  The car does emit some smoke before warmed up, so that
> makes sense to me.

a "leakdown" test as well, should tell you more about the state of the
rings I think.

>  I don't know about doing this myself, but I am more game
> for this as I gain some more experience.  There is always a first time, but
> could I get in over my head with this, or just have to give up and take the
> car to someone else?  By 'over my head', I mean could I scew something up so
> that the repair is far past what I bargained for?  Like losing pressure and
> having something fall into the cylinder?

haha, I had to partly break my magnet tool to get *something* out of a
combustion chamber as I recall.

> What pressure do you feed the air
> into the cylinders at?  

i think I put the full 120 lbs or so that I had.  When you whack the
valve springs to get them to come "undone" on the stem, you open the
vlave a bit and you want it to close pretty quickly.  pressing slowly on
the tool just opens the valve, hitting it sharply would get the spring
collar things to let go.  Oh yeah... it was one of those I dropped into
a cylinder!  I worked with all five plugs out, probably not too swift...

> I then change seals and then lifters after? 

you remove the lifters to get to the seals, so you just drop the new
ones in.  Probably the simplest, easiest r/r there is!  They just sit
there on top of the valve train.

> Bentley and Haynes manuals.  I am good at reading instructions.  Just may
> have some silly questions to start with. Is this kind of stuff on your site
> too Huw?

unfortunately, there seems to be no documentation of my doing it.  Don't
know why...

Most of the time the job takes is spent uncovering the working area -
getting all the junk off the top of the engine.  You'll need a new cam
seal, by the way.  See - you'll have to pull the timing belt cover, and
make sure TDC is right when reassembling, stuff like that.  Luckily I
had been there once before.  In all, the pieces of the job are all
simple - it's just that they add up to a few good hours of work.  More
if you take a lot of "head scratching" breaks like I do.

-- 
Huw Powell

http://www.humanspeakers.com/audi/

http://www.humanthoughts.org/