Rings and seals replacement??

Originally Posted by paulieb

Yeah my mechanic! its grey smoke at random times and sometimes real bad. coolant is fine, he is not worried about the head gasket and also changed the manafold air breather! he said its a seal problem but im just wondering if i might get away with just doing the seals and not the rings???

Grey smoke? Normally blue-ish if you are burning oil. I get grey smoke out of mine certain mornings. When there's a chill in the air and its damp so maybe its and atmospheric pressure, moisture thing. And I use about a litre of oil every 1500 miles. I do know there's nothing wrong with my engine though. Sweet as sugar. So 55K doesn't seem like a lot. Certainly if the car had been properly maintained and driven with consideration I wouldn't expect to be changing anything as extreme as rings. But you can write an engine off in a few miles if you try hard enough. Certainly within 55K if you treat it like crap and ignore its needs. So its down to history really. I wouldn't necessarily assume oil consumption means problems either. There are a couple of threads on here about oil consumption concerns and many commentators cite a litre or so every 1000-1500 miles. In fact, that sort of consumption is to spec on some models. Mercs too. Cyclone valve replacement?

Originally Posted by paulieb

well the seals are only a few euro each and estimated time is 4-5 hours so not expensive and his labour costs are low so 400 is about right!just bought upgraded vanos seal kit as well so gonna get that in too! im told its a must with any vanos engine so an extra 40 for that! fingers crossed it will be ok! thanks again to everyone who posted!

I want to be your mechanic. You're getting taken for a ride dude.

i booked in to get it done on tuesday but gonna push it back now till i get delivery of the replacement vanos seal kit late next week! ill post the results as soon as i get them!! good or bad!! thanks again guys!!

let us know i'm curious.

Ok, i went with just doing the valve seals and took a chance that the rings were ok due to the low millage! and so far so good! no more smoke also had to do rocker cover gasket but thats another problem!! so its been a couple of weeks now and im not getting any smell or smoke from the tail pipe! actually ended up costing 290 euro so i was happy with that too! now on to getting the roof working!! :/ always something!!!

how bad were you losing oil? 1 quart or 2 quart?

We had a vette back in the 80's that was diagnoised with bad seals. So after completely working over the top end the car ran even worse. Turned out that the rings were bad as well. After a new short block, car ran great. I don't know how you determine if the rings are bad if the seals are bad as well - but you would like to know before you start.

i was losing about 1 litre of oil every 150 miles or so! now after about 2 weeks and 500 miles i dont see any difference on the dip stick! the seals were like stones (hard) and as i said i just took a chance that the rings would be ok and so far so good! if the car had higher millage i wouldnt have taken the chance but it seems to have paid off and financially for the min! fingers crossed!