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hey guys been working on the honda again and i plugged up all the holes now and still going through oil. so i did a compression test and c1: 210 c2: 209 c3: 211 c4: 209. so now i know im not burning oil, but im also losing very slowly some coolant too. any hints?

car: 97 civic sedan ex auto d16y8 vtec

 
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you can still be burning oil past the piston rings

When my car (02 ex) was burning oil, it was definitely past the rings, and it was as much as 1 quart every 1000 miles

 
Rep Power: 518

It's burning oil.

Compression test only checks compression.

It cannot evaluate oil control rings. Those could be completely missing and you'd still have normal looking compression in a test.


How many miles on the engine?

Find out where it's going first.


If you pull the head to do a head gasket job, that's the ideal time to replace piston rings.

 
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thanks for the input, so im guessing a leak down test would be the next thing? i have a can of engine restore think i should put that in now or do the test first. and the engine has 185k on it.

 
Rep Power: 518

You've got good compression numbers. A leakdown test won't tell you anything more.


The mileage---I'd totally expect it to have stuck oil control rings. Toss some valve stem seals on at the same time for good measure while the head is off.

 
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could u explain a little more on oil control rings? im assuming they go on the piston and thats it. and do u think throwing the engine restore in the motor would help?

 
Rep Power: 518

https://i.imgur.com/TmgrCUQ.jpg

^Clicky^ and blow that image up to full size.

Those are the pistons from the 07 Fit I picked up with 200k on it for my GF.
You can see the top two rings on each piston are sticking out, obviously not stuck. See the 3rd ring set below the pair?

The oil rings are coked badly and stuck in their grooves. They are stuck so tight they can't spring outward against the cylinder walls to scrape the oil film as the piston goes down.

I soaked them in Mopar combustion chamber cleaner (among the best stuff available, full of banned chemicals that cause cancer in prisoners in California) for a looong time... It was soaking about 3 days when I could finally spin the oil rings by hand. I did replace the complete set of rings....because I expect this engine to go another 100k minimum. And I don't want to have to check oil on a car that's 2.5 hours away most of the time.

 
Rep Power: 512

Jesus h. Took me a minute to find the 3rd set of rings.

Seriously from 200k on an 07...?

Edit: to give OP a frame of reference, here's a pic I have of a d17a2 piston I just so happened to have on my imgur.



Engine it came from had less than 1000 miles on the clock, but has been sitting for some time, hence the disassembly

 
Rep Power: 518

I never bothered to take pics of the engines I do semi-regularly for oil consumption issues. Many with less than 100k that drink oil like frat boys drink Jack Daniels.

 
Rep Power: 512

I think Jäger is the frat boy drink of choice, but I digress.. hahaa

 
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thanks for the info guys, i had a thought of maybe putting seafoam into the crank again and running it a little longer to see if it would help loosen them up. think this might help? or am i just SOL and have to rebuild.

 
Rep Power: 518

You can try whatever you want.
I'm not holding my breath.

I had some luck just switching oils on the GFs old Saturn. It had a lifetime of Jizzylube discount oils...along with well known consumption issues...

I switched it from WTFever it had to Hondas 5w20 and/or 0w20.... consumption was eventually cut in half but it took a damn long time for that to happen. By "half" I mean it went from a quart with every other tank of gas (about 500 miles) to maybe 1000-1500 miles per quart....and by damn long time I mean 50-100k miles.

Sometimes consumption rate was more or less depending on who and how it was driven. When I change oil on it now, I still send it out with 5 extra quarts of oil in the trunk (her sons family has the car now).

 
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Baked fresh daily eh ezone?

 
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well something is better than nothing i guess i will to two seafoams both going 3000 miles in oil ( i know that most people say 250 miles max) but seafoam says its safe for motors so why not. then after that i will throw in the engine restore.