Taking A Peak At What's Inside a B3

[dalebwilson]

I see a lot of posts about oil burning, pistons, rings, pickup tubes, etc. It was such a pretty weekend in Georgia,

I decided to pull the head and drop the oil pan to take a peak at one of mine. Took about an hour or so, working in no hurry.

Bone stock oil burner B3 car with 280,000 miles:



Here is the pickup tube:



Here are a few shots of the pistons and rings:





Notice the "F" which always faces the front of the engine:



Here is what the area under the head looks like on a oil burner:

[bhearts]

Awesome, but gross. So the rings were bad? And that oil pickup. Yikes

[dalebwilson]

Bhearts....the rings were not stuck or broken but worn I presume. The ring end gaps were .100 when placed in the top and bottom of the cylinders. The cylinder bores are still within spec at around 2.795 but need to be de-glazed. The valve stem seals were replaced around 6 months ago. The car uses 1 quart of oil every 500 miles or so. I have a new set of rings on the way from Rock Auto.

[jimdigs]

Great photos. Did you have a lot of blowby in the air intake tube or was most of it going out the exhaust?

[Damkid]

Wow

[dalebwilson]

Great photos. Did you have a lot of blowby in the air intake tube or was most of it going out the exhaust?

Jim, yes there is normally some oil in the intake tube. The car smokes mostly after going down a long hill in gear. During full vacuum all that blow by oil is pulled into the combustion chamber and then burned upon re-acceleration. It will fog the road in a hurry.

[jimdigs]

Were your compression readings low? Mine has a lot of blow by in the intake but is not smoking at all YET! Plus as you may recall my compression readings are low too. Wonder what my pistons look like?

[Festevil3]

Awesome pics! Thanks for sharing, make sure to take some after pics. Thanks

[dalebwilson]

Were your compression readings low? Mine has a lot of blow by in the intake but is not smoking at all YET! Plus as you may recall my compression readings are low too. Wonder what my pistons look like?

Jim, My compression was in the 120-140 range. Your pistons probably look similar.

[dalebwilson]

Awesome pics! Thanks for sharing, make sure to take some after pics. Thanks

Thank you and will do.

[TorqueEffect]

My B3 before I swapped it out for a B6 had a compression acrossed the board of 150-160, and the only oil it ever burned was from the bad valve seals which were eventually changed.

[dalebwilson]

Torque....you certainly had good oil control rings and decent compression rings on that one. Because I had already changed the valve stem seals on this one, it did not smoke upon startup, only while driving. My 93GL however has 200 PSI compression, uses no noticeable oil between 3000 mile intervals, but will puff a little startup smoke after sitting overnight. I have read a lot about compression and oil control rings and some engines seem to have great compression and yet use oil. Some engines have low compression and use very little oil. Hard to figure out sometimes.

[dalebwilson]

Thought I would post an update for those interested.

Dirty, carbonized pistons getting a good bath in Berryman's Chem-Dip:







Pistons all clean with new rings installed:







Cylinders after a fresh deglazing:



Back together and running better than ever and parked next to my 93GL. No more smoking and the engine vacuum increased from a rough idle at 14"hg to a smooth idle at 20"hg. Spent $80 for new rings, head gasket, oil, filter and antifreeze.

[SWRT]

Holy crap that stuff works good. Impressive.
And good work Cheap fix for awesome results.

I couldn't believe how much crap there was in that
pickup filter though.

[crazyrog17]

Nice job