8v losing oil

[kittie]

Hi all

My 1992 8v is losing a fair bit of oil! It is also a little bit smokey on booting it. Seems ok on starting it up but not 100% sure. I've been lead to believe this might be due to piston rings or valve stem seals.... does anyone know which is more likeley? the cars done around 136k now.

Also I've absolutely no idea what's involved in replacing these.... can anyone give me an idea of costs?

I think the head gasket is ok as there's no trace of gunky stuff in the oil or water, also this was done at some point before I owned the car (found a reciept)

Any advice would be appreciated, cheers 

Oh and on a separate note, my MFA's oil temp thing doesn't work.... all the other functions are fine but nothing shows up for the oil temp. Is it likely to be a dodgy sensor or something? is it fixable?

[Horney]

Yup sounds like valve stem seals or Piston rings.

Get it compression checked to see what score is. If one or more cylinders are down on compression then whip their plugs out and drop some oil down the holes. Leave it over night and check in the morning. If the oil has gone then it's the rings, if not the likely valve stem seals.

Piston rings is an engine out and strip down (EXPENSIVE!) probably cheaper to get a good used engine and swap em over. Valve stem seals are in the head so just need the head swapping or rebuilt, not cheap but not mega bucks.

So first step id get a garage or someone you know to ceompression test.

Hope that helps,

Nick

P.S MFA oil temp will the sender, some one else will know which one, where it is, it's part number and how much it is.

[kittie]

  Thanks, thats useful info!

I forgot to mention also, yesterday morning I went out to the car to change a few bits over, one of which being some new plugs.

When I took the old plugs out (this was after the car had sat doing nothing overnight) I noticed they were rather oily.... would that therefore suggest valve stem seals? 

[rubjonny]

was it the ends that were oily or the threads?  I wouldnt expect the ends to be oily unless the cylinder wasnt firing, any oil would be burnt off with the combustion cycle.  The rocker covers leak most of the time though, which results in oil pooling round the sparky plugs