oil ring soak
 

Since somehow in my 2005 honda civic i got stuck oil rings..

After benting valves and valve job, i did the Headgasket too..

I be burning 1qt every 1000 miles of oil..

It never did this before, and the car has never overheated..

Compression after valve job was 200 psi all cylinders.
Ezone remember this converstation.

I decided to do this soak.

I took the spark plugs off , Used mmo , filled cylinders Marvels Mystery oil.

I let it site 15 hours.. I had still some fluild in the cylingders a lot.. cranked over excess fluid.. learned i should have syphone the ****ers out..
my coat got wet, even with holding rags over and a cardboard.. holy jesus ruined my close.


Finnaly i got the car running it does run better, added 1 cup also of MMO inside oil.

second nite , I took sprak plugs out again , filled cylinders with Sea Foam. I was planning let them soak another day?


Seafoam seems more liquidy..

My idea was MMO thicker will loosen that up, and Seafoam being more watery have another soak..


I do plan changing the oil tommorow..

My questions to EZone or experienced people..

How long to let it sit with Seafoam?

Should I run MMO in oil more often?

I kinda my engineer in me tells me the soak works better, if you put it in oil result for Oil rings is minimal.. maybe other carbon clean up... because your burning oil you will burn MMO in it.

Re: oil ring soak
 

I want to loosen those up, since i beleive wear on oil rings is minimal.

Re: oil ring soak
 

my other question is fill the cylinders up, and use compressed air pumped thru the spark plug hole.. wouldnt that be more effective forcing the seafoam thru the rings towrds the pan?

Re: oil ring soak
 

never mind seafoam worked itself down as i planned .. hopefooly this will do the trick..

might run out of seafoam , didnt realize it will go down .. marvels Mystery oil stayed longer an cylinder were full, i only had to top it once..

this stugg within 4 hours 3 of 4 cylinder are dry.. so i will know within a week after this test if it slowed or helped ..

maybe the plan will work..

I was also wondering if i use kerozene.. i will play with soak times an see how it goes..

Re: oil ring soak
 

Short answers would be "as long as possible", and "the longer the better".

If it does any good at all. Can you turn the engine upside down and fill the crankcase with seafoam? (I've never used MMO)

IMO rocking the crank back and forth just a little to get the pistons to move slightly up and down, to get the liquid to work into and around the rings will help. Repeat often.

Skip the compressed air, that will only do something on the one cylinder that has all of its valves closed.
And it will push the piston down when you do find that one with all the valves closed.
Guess what other pistons do when that one gets pushed down?
You're standing over them when it happens!

You can search Cadillac or Northstar ring problems and probably find descriptions about soaking, I think it may have been part of a service bulletin at one point in time.

I've written about such but only recently attempted it myself.
CSB time:
Bought an 07 Fit with 200k on it, dirt cheap with a blown head gasket.
Decided to rering it while the head was off.

Pic of the pistons, you can see the compression rings were not stuck but the oil rings are, they are dark as though 70% of their edges haven't seen a cylinder wall in 100k miles...I think this is just after I started spraying them with the cleaner, before I found the 4 cups they could fit and soak in:
Attachment 113819


Honda rings were special order, took a few days to get and it was a week before I could get free time to assemble the engine.

So I had 4 pistons soaking up to their rings in cups of Mopar Combustion Chamber Cleaner, supposed to be some of the best stuff one can buy with money. Has those dangerous chemicals that cause cancer in prisoners in California and all that.

After about 3 days of immersion, I could just spin all of the oil control rings in their grooves by hand....but they weren't really completely freed up, there was still a lot of goo in them.
After completely stripping the pistons, I discovered there were (clogged) holes drilled through the oil ring grooves that still had to be cleaned out by hand, with a drill bit.

Fast forward a couple weeks. Fit is assembled, cleaned up, burning fuel and on the road, GF is happy with "her new car" (CD player works, that's what she cares about the most) and she is again making sammiches for me.

Her Saturn, 2001 SL2, 170k:
She got the car with about 50k on it, and it has been drinking oil since the day I met her. I've been using Hondas quality oil in it for the last......zillion miles and consumption has slowly dropped over the years, from a quart with every other tank of gas to a quart in 800-1500 miles depending on how and who is driving it (I've posted on this car and its oil consumption issues here before).

Now that she has a Fit to drive, this car is going to her son and his wife.
So I do some work to it.
Last thing I do is pull the plugs and fill cylinders with the Mopar cleaner stuff and let it sit for a weekend.
Monday morning, have to get it out of the shop...Bla bla bla, hard as hell to get started....etc.
Didn't help, still uses a lot of oil.
At least the driver is OK with checking the oil with every tank of gas.
Still uses about a quart per 1000 miles. I change oil and put an extra 5 quarts in the trunk LOL

Re: oil ring soak
 

i cant turn the engine upside down , its in the car..
thats the point to skip over taking it apart.. I jsut cant believe busting a valve caused me to get burning oil 1 qt a 1000 miles.. i never use to check oil before that..

I am turning the timing belt counterclockwise to move it little bit .. shit no i wouldnt go clockwise.. i dont want to bend my valves...

I got 2-3 cylinders to go down to dry.. one is stubborn..



it has many miles, but i did 3000 miles oil chnage mobil one synthethic since 2005 ..

holy shit thats carbon build up, for 100,000 k... on ur pictures.

I have 280,000 miles.. engine looks line new.. did the valves and all.. cleaned the intake...
if the piston rings are a gummed up as was my intake , when i did the valves.. oh boy... I might be waisting my $$$ for nothng..

I guess i will test this and find out...

Re: oil ring soak
 

hahhaha forgot that part for compressed air..
you should have SEEn me this mourning, I held rags and a cardboard while someone crancked the engine.. i was soaked with oil went thru the rags and the cardboad right on my jacket and face
hahahaha i was cursing for a while

Re: oil ring soak
 

A quart per 1000 is liveable IMO, especially with high miles. If you got 275k on it without serious consumption issues until now, you got your moneys worth out of that engine.

I remember a spark plug picture with "speckles", does that one spark plug correspond to the cylinder that bent valves? Or did all cylinders bend valves?

Re: oil ring soak
 

it had 10 bent valves.. all cylinders were whitesh equally on the sprak plug..

that was never before..

I did compression
and leakeage test ..

and me an you concluded i had oil rings stuck..

i havent changed the PCV ever since new. but my air filter is clean..

Re: oil ring soak
 

compression 195 to 205 all 4.
no leakeage...

must be the pistong oil rings, unless PCV.. but i would have oil or somehting in air filter to prove that..

I wanted to get 500,000 miles on original motor.. somehow after my timing belt , two years later , cam bolt cam undone..

I didnt use loctite, i torqued it too.. ****er caused me all these problems.. i redid the valves and used loctite this time on it.

when i did my valves my intake was all carbon build up, it took me a while to clean it...

I did oil change every 3000, maintained by me , I am a pro .):) well maybe not as you on hondas but i know what I am doing...

couldnt belive the carbon build up then.. and looking at your fits carbon on the pistons on 100,000..

I might have just wasted two days of work an my $$$):):)

Re: oil ring soak
 

IMO the fastest and surest way to get the rings unstuck (assuming that's all of the problem) is to pull the pistons, clean out the grooves and replace the rings.

It's neither easy nor free to do, especially if you place a dollar value on your labor to take the engine apart.....

You can buy a whole bunch of quart bottles of oil for that price....but if you want to put another 100-200k+ on that engine it may be worth it to do the re-ring job.

Re: oil ring soak
 

well i soaked it twice.. 15 hours at least each time..

first MMO Mystery oil..

kept up all cylingders ,and added some into the oil like two cups.. drove it all day, then at nite i did second soak using Seafoam ..

15 hours again.. used up all Seafoam went down the pan after 4 hours i had to top the cylinders agaian..

I rotated the engine counterclockwise wili soaking to worked in..

Drover car on highway an hour to blow everything out..

changed oil finnaly and new filter.. it if it didnt improve i will know within a week or two.. If these methods work or is peoples fantasy.

i have perfect compression and know my oil rings are stuck after i bent some valves..

So we will see... if it reduced it then maybe i let it soak for 3-4 days .. if it didnt do a thing than am an idiot out of $20 and two days of time playing with it):)

Re: oil ring soak
 

EZzzoneee..

I just confirmed i wasted my $20 dollars and two days of play time for no result.
they are still stuck and burning 1qt every under 1000 miles, depending on driving.

the only thing diffrent if i let them soaked for days, and kept filling the cylinders up..

i kinda had my reservations about this, but even Seafoam didint budge shit after 15 hr soak.. .....


So this was done test under controlled manner, and I am clueless why people claim it works.

looking at your picture of pistons it makes sense they are to much crap there to loosen that up.. i remember my intake it took me days to clean of the carbon build up over the years...

I am curious Ezone, why all honda do this .. design? i know saturn too, but there is vehicles out there that never have these carbon build up..

Cant be the fuel over the years...

Give me a reason EZone):)

Re: oil ring soak
 

The issue isn't solely limited to Hondas by any stretch of the imagination. It's everywhere.

There can be many factors that contribute to the issue.

Re: oil ring soak
 

any suggestions EZONE..

I cant come to term i need to take a 200 psi compression and perfect leakage motor apart again..

b12 chemtool soak?

dump some atf before oil change in oil and drive 300-500 miles? someone said that works, others say they ruined their cranckbearings..

oil rings dont ge warn out, but why stuck.. has to be fuel i maintained this car since 3k to 275k.. so i know all history and I know what am doing..

I bet if i take it apart cleaned those put the same parts back i would drive it with no issues.. why so much gunk in my intake.. black crap clogged shit

Re: oil ring soak
 

Short version: oil cokes up due to heat, leaves carbon in the ring groove.

Ultra-low tension rings don't have much spring tension, they eventually get stuck in the carbon buildup.

Re: oil ring soak
 

I wouldn't recommend it. ATF is basically 10 weight with no detergents so it does little good. I think people assumed that because most auto trans are clean when you open them it is because of the ATF but it is really because there is no combustion byproducts. I am old enough that I have tried the ATF in the oil before an oil change years ago and it didn't hurt anything but I wouldn't do it now.

Re: oil ring soak
 

yeah i am avoiding ATF..
I read good things about rislone.. pour and drive with it for a while then dump the oil..

now what pisses me off all this keyboard warriors that give like it worked its sometimes idiot people...

some say 500 miles, some 3000, .. i dont know, maybe i pour rislone and drive it on highway an see if it clears it out, or marvels mystery oil.. worth a try at $5...


but looking at picture above from Ezone makes me cringe and now maybe all these are fairy tails story for a nappy keyboard people....

hate to dissaamle a motor that has 200 psi compression across and normal cylinder leakeage.. pisses me off... i own this car since 3k.. i did 3000 miles synthetic oil all the way thru 275k. mobil one... so why the **** synthetic oil companies claim less sludge... shit when i did the head i had the intake full of carbon.

I already spend 20 dollars on marvels soak for 15 hours , and another 15 hour soak with seafoam..
oil burning same capacity no budge at all.. measured and tested by a true professional no bs shit here.

makes you wonder, looking at that picture above if its even possible.

Re: oil ring soak
 

Dealers are re-ringing much newer engines because of oil consumption issues, many with well under 100k on them.
You got 275k of good service out of yours, you shouldn't complain.

Re: oil ring soak
 

:_doh: yeah i guess.. but if not this problem i would have driven the car to 500k):)...

i might try rislone.. test it out..
and eventually when i get some time if not do it.. labor is cheap.. its called my back):)

Re: oil ring soak
 

anyway Ezone or fergie anyway to get the pistons out from the bottom of the car..

like take the oil pan out, without taking the crank out, just take the timing belt out, and
rotating the crank..
if i disconnect the pistions, would they come out the bottom of the engine???
.. this saves me taking the head out etc top end of engine..

Re: oil ring soak
 

Nope.

Re: oil ring soak
 

nothing that easy in life..

i guess u warned me when i was doing the valves..
But i never had a oil burn issue...


hate to say it u were right...

if my oil soaks dont work, spring time i will tear it down and replace them and clean them


Do you hone the bores ? when you re-ring?

Re: oil ring soak
 

Not normally.
If the original crosshatch finish is still visible and ok, I'd just go with that.


Running your own hone through could cause more oil consumption and/or excessive wear of the new rings.

Re: oil ring soak
 

Thanks Ezone, i will drive like this for now, then in spring i will tear it down and put new rings in it.

It pisses me off, i have 200 psi compression and no leakage measured.

Another thing i want to say out here, OIL SOAKS dont work..
all these keyboard warriors claim success, well i did controled studies now, and wasted my money..
looking at picture above of ur pistons.. thats hard carbon, nothing will dislodge that.

SO i just want to save people money dont waste ur time with oil soaks rislone or mystery marvels oil... i dont see how you can blow that crap and get them released.

I read a lot, tried it , waste of money, and just dont see it..

dont waste your money, no snake oil works like real work.