Smokey Golf

[Pillock]

Golf is burning a lot of oil.... twice now friends following me (when admittedly putting my foot down a bit) have complained that my car stinks, and yesterday when hoofing it around I actually saw a puff of smoke at high revs.

 

I'm getting through about a litre a week, or one litre of oil to 50 litres of petrol. I know a certain amount of that is coming out of the oil filter housing though, judging by the state of the filter and subframe.

 

When I serviced it, the sparkplug in #4 was quite oily and dirty, the rest were clean though. It still drives well, a few flatspots but the timing is out a little too.

 

Is there any way of rounding this down further to whether it's just the head, or the rings? I know the 1.8 engines liked to eat valve stem seals, but that resulted in smoke at idle where this seems to be more at full throttle. I can whap a head on myself, they're ten a penny at breakers but if it's the rings, that's pretty much a new engine right?

 

It's an early Mk3 2.0 GTI.

[Owain-328i]

Drop another unit in it from a low miler, i assume its the 8v boat anchor, cheap enough.

[Pete-M]

If it's an AGG block, they're quite sought after by Golfists. I dropped one into my old 8v Mk2. Combined with the Mk2's head and injection system, they go rather well.

[red5]

If the plug in No4 was oily then attention sooner rather than later - probably ring/bore issue although oval valve guides aren't unheard of. How old/how many miles has it done?

[garethj]

I'm getting through about a litre a week, or one litre of oil to 50 litres of petrol. I know a certain amount of that is coming out of the oil filter housing though, judging by the state of the filter and subframe.

 

When I serviced it, the sparkplug in #4 was quite oily and dirty

If it's breathing hard and pissing oil out, it's probably worn rings. Psychic Gareth says the rings on No4 more than the others.

 

Have you got a compression tester? That'll tell you if one cylinder is down compared to the others, then you squirt some oil down the spark plug hole and test the compression again. If the reading goes up (by 10%ish) it's worn rings, if no change it's valves.

[Pillock]

It's on 146k, a 1992 car so not massive amounts of miles but certainly well run in. It's getting very gradually worse.

 

I think it's the 2E engine not the AGG, as it's an early one. Euro Car Parts list mine as the 2E2 anyway, hopefully if the AGG engine is more sought-after then a 2E will be cheap! I'm going to keep it stock, I know a 16v is an easy transplant but I don't want to pay for modified insurance.

 

I think I'm going to have to do something soon.... it's also looking like it needs a cambelt, the tensioner is fairly noisy so I might as well save the cambelt money and get someone to drop a new block in. I guess I was just hoping it was a head as that is do-able by me, with my spanners. I have nowhere to fit an engine.

[Pillock]

If it's breathing hard and pissing oil out, it's probably worn rings. Psychic Gareth says the rings on No4 more than the others.

 

Have you got a compression tester? That'll tell you if one cylinder is down compared to the others, then you squirt some oil down the spark plug hole and test the compression again. If the reading goes up (by 10%ish) it's worn rings, if no change it's valves.

Aha. This sounds like a firm answer either way... I'll borrow a compression tester. What does "breathing hard" mean? The fumes from the exhaust?

 

If it's any help, when I take the filler cap off weekly to top the oil up there's always a lot of fumes visibly escaping even though it's only been driven for less than a minute to Tesco (oil is cheap there!). Breather issues? Could a blocked breather be forcing oil anywhere it shouldn't be, and causing my issues? It does stink sometimes in traffic of "old Volkswagen", that same smell that aircooled stuff makes when hot.

[garethj]

What does "breathing hard" mean? The fumes from the exhaust?

If the rings are worn, some of the combustion gases go past the piston rings and pressurise the crankcase, this makes oil piss out of anywhere that's not done up like a submarine front door.

If it's any help, when I take the filler cap off weekly to top the oil up there's always a lot of fumes visibly escaping

Like that

Breather issues? Could a blocked breather be forcing oil anywhere it shouldn't be, and causing my issues? It does stink sometimes in traffic of "old Volkswagen", that same smell that aircooled stuff makes when hot.

Worth a check, is it easy to see on your engine? It was a right swine on my old Polo which is why it's the 2nd thing to check, after rust

[Pillock]

There's the lump on top of the rocker cover, has a rubber pipe to the throttle body and another which goes to a plastic pipe that connects to the block, between 2 and 3. That's new, it was buggered when I bought it so replaced it. Would just disconnecting all the breather pipes and blowing through them work, or is there a scientific method?

[Albert Ross]

It's shagged. Swap you for a Scorpio Cosworth. Pressurises/loses water via split hose. (Read also shagged)

[Pillock]

Sounds fair! I'd love to, actually

[Pillock]

OK, I've had a tame mechanic look over it.

 

Bizarrely, with the engine running, taking the oil filler off almost makes the car stall instantly. Put it back on, runs normally. This is suggesting some bizarre crankcase compression, no? But we seem to think it's almost certainly the rings on #4 have busted.

 

Also, the cambelt tensioner is now noisy as fook, so price of doing cambelt plus price of taking stuff apart to find the oil issues...... he's offered me a low (but unknown) mileage AGG for a hundred quid, same again to fit it. Doesn't seem a bad price given that mine's a 2E engine so there's a fair bit of faffing with injector rails and manifolds to be done. It's out of a 183k mile car, but that car should also be a 2E so it's had a replacement at some point, outside of the history which went up to 100k.

 

I reckon I'll probably take him up on the offer, I know it's not the Autoshite Budget Motoring way but I could really do with a drive in, drive out service and do without a fucked car on the driveway when my spanner-waving talent ultimately runs out.

[FredTransit]

Bump for a real thread.....