[Vwdiesel] TS rings & oil

[travis gottschalk]

8000 miles on a diesel may not be enough but it should on your engine. I remember my fathers 93 chevy diesel truck didn't break in totally till 50K miles. It only has 65K on it now but it was burning a fair amount of oil. Enough to carry a few quarts on long trips. Then at 50K you could feel the power was peaking and it stopped using oil. You didn't run the same RPM while breaking in did you. You want to expose the rings to as much fluctuation in pressures as possible. Hilly routes without cruise control is best. In town driving would likely be the worst. Granted you do have the starts from all the extra stops but the engine never really works hard. 

I guess I never knew about the soap and water deal with cleaning the cylinders. But my JD tractors are a LOT more forgiving then a diesel. Only JD diesel we did that required engine work we just put cylinder packs in. The rest were all gas. We had several that would down right scare you how pitted the cylinder bores were due to rust and being stuck. Just a hone and bead blasting of the rings and it ran like a champ. Had our pulling tractors (most of our collection is 2 cyl JD tractors) that we upped the HP a lot and had about 13:1 compression that factory was somewhere closer to 4:1 when it was still burning kerosene or stove oils. My tractor could actually run like a diesel if I killed the ignition. I had to open the petcocks to kill it. Little off topic. Just saying I have had a few engines open but diesels are not as forgiving on wear and tolerances then gasses. I did a push mower last year that I though now way it could run with the marks in the cylinder and how sloppy the piston was. Sure enough a new carb got it running and a coworker used it all summer after selling it to him (I told him the issue and asked the price of what I put into it only). 
Travis G