Ok so I have a few thousand miles on an engnbldr parts motor I assembled. I am very happy with how the motor runs but I am going through a lot of oil with zero visible leaks.

Break in oil was royal purple and current oil is rotella T-6 Synthetic. My question is this. Is the synthetic too slippery for a fast ring seating? Basically would running a standard rotella or dello dino oil help seat the rings quicker?

What are your thought fellow mechanics and shade tree mechanics?

 

I have never been able to afford Synthetic oil so never used it

That might be an issue a few thousand miles should be enough time

You did get the rings on correct and the oil ring is really critical

Compression Test ??

Might be valve guide did you go with a new head or new valves .

Do you see quite a lot of blow by with the oil filler cap removed??

The oil looks real bad in a short time if the rings are not seated

If the rings are not seated the oil gets past the rings

poor valve guides the oil burns

How do the plugs look??

 

I always heard that you specifically do not want to use synthetic when breaking in a rebuilt engine. People can correct me if I'm wrong...

 

What is a few thousand miles?? Two thousand,. five thousand???

Seems there are many who have built these engines and they ended up pumping oil, even with rings from different sources.

Does'nt sound promising to me. Most ring seating is done in a few hundred miles, or less.

What grit hone did you use??

It is my recent experience that most machine shops use too fine hones for the best results in these old engines.

The last block I had honed at the machinists was supposed to be 'plateau honed', where a coarser hone is followed up with a finer one.

The final honing waas with 400 grit. I did'nt like it and I honed it slightly with a 240 hone at home, before I punched the pistons in.

It PO'd me that they would'nt hone my block as I wished, and I had to switch shops afterward.

I prefer using a 240 grit, or a 280 grit max. By the time I've got a thousand miles, I consider them broke in.

I've built quite a few engines and never had an oil pumper yet.

Any cheap oil for starters, with a ZDDP additive and run only a couple hundred miles. Another thousand with ZDDP additive, and then good to go with oil of choice.

I like Castrol GTX for fresh engines and Rotella later in life.

Hundreds of thousands of these engines have made 300,000mi and more on any old dino oil. Syn oils are a waste of money IMO>

 

That is my understanding too. Break in with dino oil and if all is well change to synth at first change.

 

I have heard and read the same thing too.

22RE Performance says to not use synthetic also: http://www.22reperformance.com/faqs/...-break-in.html

Unless you used Royal Purple's special break-in oil, then something went wrong when the rings were supposed to seat.

 

Ok, engbldr did all the block work and I am running one of his head. I quadruple checked each piston for ring placement before I put them in. So I believe they are correct. As for millage I am right around 2000 +\-.

I don't drive it hard but I do run it an out heat in to the cylinders. As for compression I will do a compression test tomorrow and if it tests good then I guess I will do a leak down test next. Also I plan on calling engnbldr tomorrow and picking his brain.

 

On an engine so fresh as yours, compression and /or leak-down tests will likely tell nothing about oil ring issues.

Unless there is something really out of whack, I expect that those tests will show your engine to be in good condition.

It will still burn oil, however.

 

When you first fired it up what did you do?

 

Broke in the new cam 1500-2000-1500 shut it off and let it cool down.

 

That's about right. Like you said it seems like the rings may not have seated and going to synth at 2k won't allow them to.

 

If the rings are not seated @ 2K they most likely never will, regardless of what oil is used going forward.

Any 'bite' that the honing gave is long gone.

Not that I endorse anything so foolish, but way back in the days of iron head Harley Davidsons, I heard of guys aspirating Comet abrasive cleanser into hog engines to promote ring seating.

Gotta love those crazy bikers.

 

How much oil has it burned? More than a couple quarts?

My engine burned a quart and a half in it's first 2000 miles and I was getting worried, but it won't burn a drop anymore at 4000 miles, so it's all good.

Gotta ask, why'd you break-in with royal purple? That's a synthetic and Putney's is real specific about "NEVER (EVER!)" doing it that way. I don't know why that is, but I'm sure they have their reasons. Did you run it by them and they made an exception for RP's product? I ask because if it comes down to worst-case scenario they may deny a warranty claim. Either way, they'll have some of the best advice on what's going on and hopefully it resolves OK.

 

It's what engnbldr and a friend that runs a shop recommended.

It lost almost 3 quarts so far.

 

I may be showing a bit of age here but when you said Royal Purple I thought you meant their dino oil.
Did you use Royal Purple's break-in oil or their synth oil to break in?

 

So here's a good thing that outta help back you up - "Royal Purple Synthetic Oil" is actually the full brand name so they don't change it on the bottle of break-in oil even though it sure is a conventional.

Also, I definitely agree burning 3 quarts in 2000 miles is a lot but not the most you could be losing. Crazy to imagine but if it was certain bmw's or audi's, that would be considered "normal" (according to both companies, losing one quart in 600-700 is acceptable).

You put a lot of time and effort into getting it back on the road so I'll assume you're still doing some sort of calculated break-in driving these first few thousand miles? I know some people don't do anything special and it's fine but I located a nice stretch of hills and drove up in 2nd or 3rd to 3500 rpm and then coasted/engine break back down till the engine was below 2000 rpm. Over and over again. The steeper the better for greater engine load, which I was led to understand is the key to seating rings fast (one hill was so steep that it visibly burned oil on the way up and figured I'd blown the headgasket but the steep angle just forced some oil where it shouldn't have gone for a minute, whew).

Even though your cylinder walls have probably lost most of the tooth at this point, maybe there's still some way to drive it real hard that could help the process. I'm sure we've all read about the 22re that didn't seal up till 30,000 miles so what happened that finally caused that? It'd be nice if someone with experience on this could drop off some knowledge.

 

I definitely drive it like that and living off of HWY 12 in Washington helps a lot with that. Aka putting heat in to the cylinders. Going to do an oil change this week and go to conventional oil for the next 5-10,000 miles ish. Longer if needed. I will keep this thread updated.

And I know what you mean about Audi's burning oil. My buddy has a B7 RS4 that is now a flatly dedicated track car. But when he would daily drive it he was always shocked when he would check the oil at the end of the week and be down 1/2 a quart or more.

 

Such a touchy topic..

I used cheap as chips wally world oil, super tech(?) With a splash of Lucas oil stabilizer over the cam and rocker assembly.

Idled the crap out of it before doing two short WOT runs up the alleyway to verify the turbocharger. My only notable oil consumption has been through the crappy PCV valve that was leaking boost pressure and shoving it out the vent line.

I have zero notable cam wear, slight valve stem wear(the one that doesn't or hadn't rotated a full revolution I posted images of), and decent cyclinder walls.

.. bottom line all engines are different due to slight variations ..

I'm wondering if maybe your rings aren't grabbing the piston, and thus they've spun the gaps to a bad alignment. Did you gap them? Can you recall if they felt sloppy on the piston?

Synthetic has come a long way and I wouldn't be so quick to blame it for being "overly slippery" to prevent ring seating. New cars ship with synthetic and don't get any sim testing before that fire them up and drive them off the end of the assembly and zero break in before being parked to be shipped.

Anyways I leave you with this bit. It's not the heat cycles that seat rings it's the pressure inside the cylinders. You might have heat glazed the cylinder walls, this hardened the honed ridges, the way around this is to tear it down and re-hone or get it hot and well wail on the throttle which will either fix it or break it..

 

Might have heat glazed then is right. Honestly if that's the case I'm not going to tare the motor down. I will just get a low mile 4cyl taco motor and swap it in. Try and get the whole truck and then run my gauges with torque pro and only worry about my gas and spedo.

I'm seriously so done messing with this 4Runner. Paid more money than I want to admit to in having the 31 year old brittle wiring checked and figured out. And it still looks like I may have a bad ECU. Runs like a watch and still tripping either codes 4,5,6. Or 5,6,7 depending on the day.

Edit. Forgot to add the rings weren't sloppy at all.

 

drive it till it won't drive no more and of course keep an eye on your oil level. That's more than most people do, we are the exception sad to say but it's true most don't care even if the engine light is on.

Lol plenty of us have stories of a quart a day so on that scale your kicking butt.