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imbodie
01-03-2010, 05:38 PM
Ok, now that I have the car actually running I took it on a short trip today. All in all aprox 100 miles round trip. I started out with topped off fluids including the oil. By the time I had gotten back to town my oil light was flickering. I thought initially this was just thinned out oil and low oil pressure (my air cooled vw would do the same thing).

When I checked the oil, it didn't even register on the dipstick. Granted this was after immediately shutting the engine off and I haven't checked it after it sat for 30 minutes, but any ideas what could make it use/loose so much oil in less than 100 miles?

I don't think it's leaking it out and the car isn't smoking THAT much, or atleast I didn't think it was.

Prior owner confirms that this is typical oil useage for the car since she got it.
I have several ideas like re-ringing the pistons, valve seals, valve job....
but where should I start first?

-Tim

imbodie
01-03-2010, 05:43 PM
The guy that had it before the person I got it from was using conventional oil in the car, not oil for diesel engines, I don't know that this matters much but thought I might ought to add that small bit of info. Also, I don't think it is leaking oil at that fast of a rate, but there are puddles of some liquid collecting on the air intake manifold. It's not thick enough to be oil, doesn't smell like diesel or antifreeze. I'm sure it's oil but definitely not oil consistency. It's dripping at the front of the mainifold and making its way towards the ground, though some of it is hitting the exhaust manifold.
-Tim

Jason
01-03-2010, 08:18 PM
What oil are you running in it now? Diesel rated oil is quite a bit different. Do you still have the oil seperator on the valve cover? From top to the bottom of the dipstick is at least a quart or more of oil. If its not pouring all over the ground I cant see how you could burn that much in only 100 miles without some visible oil smoke.

Jason

piper109
01-04-2010, 03:35 AM
That sounds like excessive blowby. I used 27 quarts of oil in 500 miles when I first drove my D24T home. I dumped in 2 quarts every 50 miles. Yeah, I rebuilt it rightaway.
A lot of the oil went from the breather into the intake....then out the tail pipe.

Steve

Jason
01-04-2010, 06:34 AM
27 quarts in 500 miles???!!! Holy crap and I thought my car used some oil! WOW

Jason

imbodie
01-05-2010, 06:03 PM
What oil are you running in it now? Diesel rated oil is quite a bit different. Do you still have the oil seperator on the valve cover? From top to the bottom of the dipstick is at least a quart or more of oil. If its not pouring all over the ground I cant see how you could burn that much in only 100 miles without some visible oil smoke.

Jason

Ok... Let me just hit each question...
Rotella 15-40, same as in my Dodge Cummins

oil seperator??? I have a rubber tube from valve cover to air intake that is an exhaust gas recirc of sorts... whats an oil seperator?

It's not pouring out anywhere though there is smoke when it runs but NOTHING like I would think you would see with a quart every 25 miles which is about the rate I'm loosing it.

The smoke that I am seeing is white or whiteish-blue. I did romp on it twice on my return trip home and got pretty good rolls of black smoke, but then that was expected when I did it.

It has been pretty cold here and since the 3 new glow plugs that I put in last week the car is firing right up and the motor sounds quite strong. I've never had an engine need rebuilt that started so easy.... It's hitting on first crank every time.
Planning a compression test, but really wonder if this is the issue.

Thanks for the feedback.
Tim

v8volvo
01-05-2010, 06:55 PM
Ok... Let me just hit each question...
Rotella 15-40, same as in my Dodge Cummins

oil seperator??? I have a rubber tube from valve cover to air intake that is an exhaust gas recirc of sorts... whats an oil seperator?

It's not pouring out anywhere though there is smoke when it runs but NOTHING like I would think you would see with a quart every 25 miles which is about the rate I'm loosing it.

The smoke that I am seeing is white or whiteish-blue. I did romp on it twice on my return trip home and got pretty good rolls of black smoke, but then that was expected when I did it.

It has been pretty cold here and since the 3 new glow plugs that I put in last week the car is firing right up and the motor sounds quite strong. I've never had an engine need rebuilt that started so easy.... It's hitting on first crank every time.
Planning a compression test, but really wonder if this is the issue.

Thanks for the feedback.
Tim

Due to their extreme high compression compared to gas engines, diesels can burn quite a lot of oil and not have any major visible smoke. You could pour straight motor oil into your fuel tank and the engine would run OK on it. The heat and pressure in the combustion chamber are so high that it will burn almost anything.

Your situation sounds like a combination of factors, leaking and burning both. The stuff collecting on the intake runners is oil from a leaky valve cover gasket. The cork gaskets on these engines are notorious leakers. If you install a rubber 1-piece one, available from Volvo or some parts houses, it solves the problem. Check your valve clearances while you're in there.

The main thing going on is almost certainly worn, damaged and/or stuck piston rings. Valve seals or guides cannot cause that much oil consumption. Using non-diesel-rated oil is likely a big part of the problem here. Diesel oils are formulated to handle the soot production and different kinds of stresses found in a diesel engine. If gasoline engine oil is used, serious sludging and deposit problems can result, which will gum up the rings and prevent proper sealing. That may be part of what's going on in your engine if non-diesel oil was used for a long period of time. If that is the case, you may be able to help free them up by using some different types of oil, such as Lubro-Moly's MoS2 anti-friction stuff or a good lightweight synthetic, or even some additives like Marvel Mystery Oil or Rislone. However, that can turn into an expensive experiment since those oils are not cheap when you're burning through it as fast as you are. You may see some positive results, but then again you may not.

There is also the possibility that the rings have been damaged by overheating, or are just plain worn. I used to have a VW Rabbit with the 1.6L diesel (same as a D24 with two less cylinders). When I bought it, it used over a quart of oil every 100 miles. I tried different oils and additives and it made no difference. I pulled the head off and had it rebuilt with new valves, guides, seals etc, and that made no difference either. Finally I took the pistons out and discovered that the rings were shot -- cylinder bores were OK, but the rings had had all their spring cooked out of them by someone overheating it in the past. I gave the cylinders a light hone, cleaned the pistons and installed new standard-size rings and it was completely fixed. That engine never used so much as a drop of oil again. I drove it all across the country and never once added oil to it.

Even when it was burning through oil like crazy, the Rabbit always started and ran perfectly and barely smoked. I couldn't believe it could be the rings until I finally tore it down.

My guess is that your situation is similar.

volvo d6
01-06-2010, 12:57 AM
D24 engines are like humans they are all different! Some engines drives normally but uses alot of oil like imbodies car. Some engines get hard to start when cold and som engines start perfectly when cold but not if it is warm.
And some engines are very slow.

Jason
01-06-2010, 05:18 AM
You might try BG109 compression restore. Its supposed to be able to free up stuck rings and dissolve carbon build up. It would be worth a try I doubt your consumption will get any worse!

Jason

piper109
01-06-2010, 10:54 AM
I hate to tell you this but my engine used a quart in 25 miles. When I pulled it down, the top piston ring gaps were more than 1/4". One was broken.
Amazingly it would crank up quite easily and did not seem to use oil.....until you drove it.

The guy I bought it from said check the oil on the way home so I checked it after ~100 miles. Fortunately we stopped for food. It took 4 quarts to get it back to the dipstick mark.

The engine and had less than .001" wear in the bores and I rebuilt it using the same pistons. Same engine will use a quart in about 2-3000 miles now.
The starter ring had some teeth missing too so I had to remove the engine anyway.

Steve

imbodie
01-06-2010, 05:40 PM
You might try BG109 compression restore. Its supposed to be able to free up stuck rings and dissolve carbon build up. It would be worth a try I doubt your consumption will get any worse!

Jason

I can't find BG109, the local parts stores have never heard of it. I went to the website and there are three sites in my town that are listed for special services but it doesn't mention that BG109 is available at any of them.

I did try Risolone (sp??) and have used several cans of Seafoam. The Seafoam would seem to fix the problem for aprox 4 days, but eventually the car would go right back to using oil again. This was just pouring the seafoam into the oil, or into the fuel. I haven't tried pouring it into the valve cover and letting it set.

Is BG109 THAT good? I know I've seen quite a few posts about it in the forums here.

-Tim

imbodie
01-06-2010, 05:56 PM
I hate to tell you this but my engine used a quart in 25 miles. When I pulled it down, the top piston ring gaps were more than 1/4". One was broken.
Amazingly it would crank up quite easily and did not seem to use oil.....until you drove it.

The engine and had less than .001" wear in the bores and I rebuilt it using the same pistons. Same engine will use a quart in about 2-3000 miles now.
The starter ring had some teeth missing too so I had to remove the engine anyway.
Steve

Boy that sure sounds like what I'm experiencing.
I took the car to my TRUSTED mechanic who has worked on vw's that I've owned for 20 years or more and he suggested a compression test (all injectors pulled) for a good idea of what was going on with the engine.
He felt that the compression test would be a better indicator of rings or valve issues before I just tore into the engine.
I asked him for a guess as to where my oil was going and he felt (with out the compression test) that it was the valve guides and offered a good explanation as to why it would most likely be the valve guides. Stating that this engine pumped a LOT of oil to the top of the motor to keep the cam shaft lubricated and that the oil was filling up the valve tubes when they were closed and draining out when they opened up.
Ok thats my best paraphrase of what he said.... it sounded much more concise when he said it.

So what do you guys think? would a compression test differentiate between valve guides and rings?

-Tim

v8volvo
01-06-2010, 06:40 PM
So what do you guys think? would a compression test differentiate between valve guides and rings?

-Tim

Not necessarily. It would tell you if your compression rings are OK or not, but it wouldn't tell you anything about the condition of your oil control (scraper) rings. If those are gummed up it may still have fine compression -- as it possibly does if it starts well -- but it could still be experiencing major oil consumption via the rings since oil will get up past them.

You may want to try checking what your blowby situation is, since that often accounts for the major portion of oil use in tired engines. If your engine runs OK but has a lot of blowby, there are things you can do to keep oil use under control without having to get into major engine repairs. Here are a couple tests to start with. First, disconnect the breather tube from the valve cover and plug the opening in the valve cover with a cap (5/8" heater hose block-off cap available at your FLAPS should work fine). Then run the engine with the oil cap off and see how much air/oil vapor is being blown out. Even a normal healthy diesel engine will push a certain amount of crankcase pressure due to their high compression, but if there is a torrent of air coming out and blowing oil everywhere, then you have found your problem. See if it blows the oil cap off when you set it on the hole lightly (not screwed on).

You can then confirm this test with a second one. Remove the cap you put on the valve cover breather connection, and getting a long piece of appropriately-sized hose that you will run to a container. A few feet of hose running to something like a juice bottle temporarily mounted on one side of the engine compartment ought to work. It's best if the container is something clear so you can see what's going on inside it. Make sure everything is secure and then go out for a drive. If it is really using a quart every 25 miles, then driving 5-10 miles or so ought to be enough. Drive as you normally would. Then stop and check how much oil has accumulated in the bottle. If there is a significant amount, then blowby is unquestionably the cause of your oil use.

If both of these tests show no blowby and no oil consumption, AND a compression test shows your compression is perfect, THEN I might start to believe it is related to valve guides or seals. However, history of these engines shows that 99.9% of the time rings are the issue when you have symptoms like these, and chasing other stuff is just a waste of time and money. Using that much oil that fast, your valve guides would have to be unbelievably sloppy, and that just isn't considered much of an issue with these engines. You can try the above tests on your own before paying for a compression test, and they will give you a pretty good idea of what is going on in there.

piper109
01-06-2010, 07:04 PM
I believe you will find that the valves are worn and sloppy. I predict 5 thousands on the inlets and 15-20 on the exhausts........as well as the worn rings.
I believe this is how those engines wear on the wrong oil. It wont be one or the other, it will be both.
Symptoms of worn guides are that it smokes blue when you first start it up as oil leaks onto the top of the valve faces when the engine is stopped. Once it burns off blue smoke will cease then on an overrun from high rpm you will fog the neighborhood.

Steve

Jason
01-06-2010, 07:22 PM
You could get a decent amount of oil through the guides if the valve seals are petrafied and flaking apart. These engines are known to wear rings and have compression issues, especially the NA cars because of softer blocks, and more soot accumulation around the rings. The BG 109 is good stuff. We sell it at my shop. I don't know if we have a bottle of it right now, we only keep one in stock as most people dont know what the hell it is. We can order one and get it next time we get stuff from BG. I think it goes for about 20 bucks a bottle. For the consumption to be that high, I would suspect lots of wear, or totally crapped up and stuck rings. As I said, the oil consumption really cant get much worse, but you might as well do a compression check before you go any further.

Jason

imbodie
01-10-2010, 08:15 PM
The BG 109 is good stuff. We sell it at my shop. I don't know if we have a bottle of it right now, we only keep one in stock as most people dont know what the hell it is. We can order one and get it next time we get stuff from BG. I think it goes for about 20 bucks a bottle. Jason

So, can you guys ship a bottle to me if I can't find it locally?

-Tim

imbodie
01-10-2010, 08:23 PM
If it is really using a quart every 25 miles, then driving 5-10 miles or so ought to be enough. Drive as you normally would. Then stop and check how much oil has accumulated in the bottle. If there is a significant amount, then blowby is unquestionably the cause of your oil use.



Ok.... ran a tube from the valve cover vent to a 1 gallon Rotel oil jug (emtpy of course) drove just shy of 25 miles varying my driving style from town to interstate.

GUESS WHAT I FOUND????

I had almost blown an entire quart of oil in the 25'ish miles that I drove.

Ok at this point I believe my entire 4 quarts of disappearing oil in a 100 mile round trip were all spent through blowby. I also think a LARGE part of the oil on the air intake probaly came from the same blow by. Leaking down from the big air intake tube to the top of the manifold.

I'm going to google it after this post, but now that I know its almost all blow by... what exactly does this tell me?

Thanks again,
Tim

v8volvo
01-10-2010, 11:26 PM
I'm not too surprised to hear that. I think it would be hard for an engine to burn oil that much that quickly any other way besides through huge blowby.

OK, by doing this, you have identified the source of the problem. What this tells you is that you have serious issues with the sealing of your rings. That can be due to one of the following three conditions, or any combination of them: 1) stuck/crudded-up rings; 2) worn rings; or 3) worn cylinder bores. Now you have to decide what to do about it. If #1 is the cause of your problem, you may be able to free up the rings somewhat over time by using different oils and/or additives. Since you said gasser oil was routinely used, I would bet there is at least some ring sticking and coking going on, which you may be able to help with "fluid fixes." However, if #2 or #3 are what is going on -- and to at least some degree they almost surely are -- then your only "true fix" is an engine rebuild.

How many miles does the motor have on it? If it starts and runs well, you might be able to get by for quite a while simply by constructing some way of trapping the blowby oil and returning it to the sump. That will at least give you time to run the car for a few thousand miles and try experimenting with options for unsticking the rings. Jason built an oil separator system for his car that was done very nicely. You could try doing something similar, and results will probably be good. This will prevent you from running out of oil, or experiencing a much more scary potential problem that I'll describe below.

The dangerous thing about driving it the way it is now is that you could experience a runaway situation. Your level of blowby is so high that, under certain conditions, the engine could start to run on the oil vapors that are being pumped into the intake manifold and "run away." It will get into a self-perpetuating feedback loop that will cause it to run faster and faster and faster. Once that starts to happen, you have no way of stopping it -- turning off the key will not help at all, and since your car is an automatic you are not able to stall it out. You only option would be to let it rev to the moon until it self-destructed, which would be a sad ending, and potentially a dangerous one if you couldn't get off the road fast enough.

So, I would run it with the crankcase vent at least routed to an external container for now, like you did when you performed the blowby test, to prevent the possibility of runaway, and then construct something more permanent. Then you can see what kind of results you get from BG 109, LM MoS2, etc.

Jason
01-11-2010, 04:12 AM
I don't know if you would be able to seperate out that much oil. The setup I did was to cut down oil into the intake mostly because I run the shit out of my car all the time and the high rpm's really push some oil up into the valve cover. It did cut down on oil usage, but I don't use anywhere near the oil you are talking about. I may use a quart every 500 miles the way I drive it.

Jason

Jason
01-11-2010, 04:13 AM
I am amazed that it starts at all with that much wear, I would think you would have almost no compression to be able to have that kind of blow by.

Jason

v8volvo
01-11-2010, 08:34 AM
Older VW IDI diesels are remarkable, they will start OK even with almost no compression as long as they have good glow plugs in them. I suppose the prechamber design must be very efficient. My old Rabbit was similar -- started and ran perfect but drank oil almost as fast as it used fuel. They can do that and still seem to work well, but you have to be careful.....

piper109
01-11-2010, 09:07 AM
Quote..... I'm going to google it after this post, but now that I know its almost all blow by... what exactly does this tell me?

Thanks again,


Your rings are shot I'm afraid.
You can do the job in the car if you drop the suspension cross member so pan can be removed. Of course the head will have to come off anyway.

Otherwise you will have to yank the engine and do a host of other things you hadn't planned on doing either.

Steve

MRDART
01-18-2010, 11:31 PM
My car is not leaking... It is just marking itīs territory:D
My car uses quite a bit of oil, maybe 2 quarts of oil in 500 miles, I have aloose engine due for a rebuild, just waiting for summer to come along and Iīll get right on it...
Here in sweden people think Iam crazy for doing a rebuild on an old d24tic, and yes you canīt justify it economicaly, but I would just once like to drive a d24tic like it was from the factory, It is a love/hate relationship...

imbodie
01-24-2010, 07:39 PM
You could get a decent amount of oil through the guides if the valve seals are petrafied and flaking apart. These engines are known to wear rings and have compression issues, especially the NA cars because of softer blocks, and more soot accumulation around the rings. The BG 109 is good stuff. We sell it at my shop. I don't know if we have a bottle of it right now, we only keep one in stock as most people dont know what the hell it is. We can order one and get it next time we get stuff from BG. I think it goes for about 20 bucks a bottle. For the consumption to be that high, I would suspect lots of wear, or totally crapped up and stuck rings. As I said, the oil consumption really cant get much worse, but you might as well do a compression check before you go any further.

Jason

Ok, found a local supplier for BG109, he said that I would need a quart of the stuff. Is it worth it? or do you guys think I'm wasting my $$ and should just watch my oil levels and get it re-ringed in the spring-summer.
I still don't know how much the BG109 is going to cost, I'll find out monday.

Thanks,
Tim

Jason
01-25-2010, 08:43 AM
Like I said we sell it for around 20 bucks a bottle. It cant hurt anything. Chances are the rings are shot, but you never know. It could just be crapped up and stuck rings. I still say its worth a try for 20 bucks or so.

Jason