My K Series Is Losing Oil Thread

[Milan]

This is what mine looked like when I pulled them out at around 84,991 miles on them.  

[NVA-AV6]

You guys see those grey little blobs, that is burnt oil deposites, you both have oil gettting past the rings into the combustion chamber.

Slammed, cylinder 1 looks especially crappy....

[Slammedk24]

So what do you recommend doing to help this problem from getting worse.  Besides changing the type and weight of oil I run but is there anyhting else I should do

[NVA-AV6]

Nothing that can be done, clean them off, change oil weight and look again after a while, if is persists then it would take new pistons and rings to fix it, but if that is 26K miles it isn't too bad, but the engine is getting tired.....

[Slammedk24]

Ok how should I clean the plugs with a fine wire brush or is that too harsh.  And do you recommend that I change #1

[NVA-AV6]

Use eaither a stainless or brass brush and then check the gap before reinstalling.

[Skippy]

Most honda dealerships have a few old school technicians with spark plug cleaners...they use a media blasting bag that takes all the gunk off.

Just so you guys know, synthetic does burn faster and more readily than conventional oil, and K series are indeed oil eaters.  I noticed it in my car along with a bunch of other people.  It may be due to the fact that our VTEC operates constantly...that's all I can think of to accelerate oil deterioration and consumption.

Paul...6-9 PSI at idle? wow! K series idle oil pressure is in the mid 40's at idle and near 100 PSI under load!

[Sworkhard]

I've noticed my car has suddenly (in the last 7000 or so miles) started burning oil.  so about 1000 miles ago i replaced the pcv valve and did a seafoam treatment.  Now i'm monitoring the situation (still too soon to tell).  The increase in oil consumption seems to coinside with installing my injen short ram intake, so if oil consumption is still high, i'll try putting my oem intake back on and see if that helps.  I was burning about 1/2 quart every 5000 miles, but my last change i burned over 2 quarts in the same amount of time    I have a bit less than 130000 miles on my car.  When i did my last change, the oil seemed dirtier and grittier than I remember from previous changes, dispite a 4500 mile oci. vs my usually 6000 mile oci

[NVA-AV6]

Skippy- those reading are at full operationg temprature, when cold yeah I get 50-70PSI at idle, hell the factory manual only calls for min 10PSI at idle.

Sworkhand- One thing with seafoam, where do you think all that carbon goes when you use the stuff???

[Skippy]

Paul, sorry to keep this going, but I'm still amazed! K series oil pressure is in the mid 30's to 40's at idle at operating temp.  I can't believe J series have such low oil pressure at idle! So interesting!

[Sworkhard]

NVA-AV6: I checked the oil before I did the seafoam.  I did do a lot more cold starts and very short trips on this oil change than usual though so that'll have a lot to do with oil consumption as well.  I also did a auto-rx treatment 3 oil changes ago so that might have something to do with the grittier oil as well.  (The stuff works really well, but very slowly).  I'll be following it as i'll be doing almost all highway driving this summer so it should go back to the regular 1/2 quart per 5000

[Milan]

I have noticed that my car started guzzling oil recently.  In a little under 4,000 miles, I have had to add 4 quarts of oil.  In the past, I would have to add about 1.5 to 2 quarts between oil changes (5k miles for me).  

From Tim's and Skippy's advice I took off the valve cover and took some pictures of the cams.  The two exhaust cams that were facing me look very rough with some slight indentations.  The intake cams look a lot better but I'm no expert.

Any of you engine gurus, please share your thoughts about what can be done, if anything.  I'm not really in the position to do an engine swap, I'd like to save what's left of this motor.  What are my options?  Thank you in advance!  





Cylinder 1 exhaust cam



Cylinder 3 exhaust cam




Cylinder 1 intake cams



Spark plugs



Inside of my valve cover

[alpha]

What oil do you use? How many miles do you have?

If you're not losing the oil, then my first guess would be an oil pressure issue.

[Milan]

Mileage is 131,xxx. 10w-30 Valvoline Max Life

[NVA-AV6]

Exhaust cam is toast and the oil is going somewhere, I would have to imagine it is being burnt, now the question is are the valve steam seals gone or are the rings, get a compression test.