Advice

Also I can't forget that he messed with the valve seals so if he screwed something up I've gotta trail behind him and fix it
 
Normally, when an engine burns oil it's the valve seals, so all kinds of people replace them on our engine but it still smokes.

That seal job that the PO did or had done, may well have been done properly.

I don't think oil burning from leaking valve seals is as bad as our oil ring burning gets?
You can probably just ignore that and keep an eye on your oil level?
 
Yes it may have been but I can tell you the smoking is a good bit worse than when I sold it so just throwing it out there
 
Yeah, ... and the head has to come off anyway to get the pistons out so that's the time to redo the valve seals, or have it machined and rebuilt.

But then it ends up costing more than the car is worth.

It's a tough call.
 
Well my question for myself would be is the cost more than the price of a good running car of equal quality? If it is not then it gets the repair.

What would he have had to remove to do the valve seals? Anything obvious that could've been left loose that would leak oil?
 
" What would he have had to remove to do the valve seals? "

Not too much actually.

Just the valve cover.

You can feed compressed air into the spark plug hole to keep the valves from falling into the cylinder when you work on it.

You can even fill the cylinder with rope then gently rotate the piston up to hold the valves.

I love that trick. Lol
 
Okay, that's what I thought thanks. My teacher told us about the rope as if he came up with it lol
 
There's also the option of just swapping in a used engine.
Apparently, you can get one for ~$500.

Keep in mind that if that engine is burning oil too, the only way to tell is to run it and see if your oil level is dropping.
It doesn't smoke in the early stages of plugging up and seizing.
 
I remember driving home from camping in my '85 626 in the early 90s.
My rad hose fell off and I didn't notice till I finally saw steam.
By then my rad was empty and my head was warped.
I pulled over, reconnected the hose and dumped my water jug into the rad.
I had a hundred miles to go to make it home.
Every time I passed a creek or river I'd pull over, fill up my water jug and dump it in the rad.
I must have blown 5 gallons of water through my engine and out the tailpipe before I made it home. Lol

I had a parts car at home so I decided to just swap the head.
I didn't bother replacing the head bolts or even the head gasket.
The gasket came off in one piece except for a tiny piece that was missing between cylinders 2&3.
I filled the spot with copper RTV silicone then sprayed down both sides with the aerosol version and reinstalled it.

It worked fine until I sold it about a year later.

You don't always need to aim for perfection.
Sometimes "good enough" is good enough. Lol
 
Another to note is that if you decide to redo your pistons without removing the engine, you need to drill two holes through the bell housing to gain access to two bolts to get the upper oil pan off.


 
Alright, today I scanned the CEL(s), looked closer at the damage, looked for the oil and exhaust leak, and pulled the spark plugs. First the CEL, all four seem to be related to an EVAP leak and the VTCS solenoid. The control arm is worse than I thought and the sway bar link is all bent around. I didn't find the oil leak but I think I found the exhaust leak or one of them, in the pictures you can see what looks like a mangled exhaust gasket. The plugs look pretty rough for only having 4,000 miles on them so I cleaned them up and regapped them. Then I looked down and there it was, a good bit of oil on top of the pistons. So does this mean I should go ahead and order new valve seals too? Or are they something I can reuse if he just messed them up? https://photos.app.goo.gl/TzEAxjV2KYJtEYxp6
 
There is a test to see if it's valve seals or oil rings...




You can always redo the seals after if you fix the rings and it still burns oil.
 
So was it wet after sitting all night or after you ran it for a minute?

Was it dry before the test?
 
Also I throw this out there, there was a good size oil stain under it and you could clearly tell by the smoke it was burning off the exhaust but it hasn't dripped in my driveway yet.
 
Back