AAZ high oil consumption

[Al Housman]

I've noticed an alarming increase in my need to top up my AAZ powered Syncro. I use a 10/40 semi synthetic oil and the vehicle does a lot of hard work on an almost daily basis. The engine has been great since I fitted it about 2 years ago and runs really well. It is smoking quite a bit when accelerating and climbing steep hills and there is a strong smell of burnt oil.

I will obviously consider testing the compression etc but I do wonder whether the turbo may be leaking oil into the engine. I took the top off the LDA (I hope I'm talking about the right bit- the top of the injector pump) to install a new boost pin and the thing was swimming in oil. Cleaned it and ran it and it was again soaked in oil. Does anyone know if this is normal. It would suggest to me that quite a bit of oil is going into the inlet manifold and then up the thin pipe to the connection on top of the LDA.

It would obviously be good to eliminate less costly possibilities before embarking on (yet) another engine swap!

Your thoughts would be gratefully received.

Al

[dave friday]

Try taking the breather pipe off the cam cover and put a wine cork in it,run a pipe from the cam cover to a coke bottle [to see how much blow-by its got].
Do you still get oil in the lda after the above?....
Mine was rings!!!
Good luck.

[Al Housman]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try tomorrow, once I've polished off this bottle of 'entre deux legs'.(Couldn't find a cork anywhere!)

. I did have the turbo return pipe crushed last year which I thought at the time might have done something to the turbo but general opinion was that it should be ok.

Never replaced the rings before. Did you get a rebore or just pop in new rings? In my biking days(Enfield Bullet) we used to get oversize rings and file them to fit the bore!! Still has great compression now!

[dave friday]

hi Al,i checked the rings at the very top of the bore [unworn part] and two rings were way out of spec [ring gap 1.3mm] one in spec [.45mm].
This was 50000miles after a re-bore!!
I had to top up every 100miles!
So...new rings and big end shells+bolts,i crosshatched the bores then rebuilt the engine..
oil consumption after; 750miles to less than 1/2 a ltr !

[Al Housman]

Did breather pipe text with no appreciable oil loss.

But I did fit a new air filter and you know what I think it's done the trick.

I don't mind holding my hands up and admitting that I had clearly overlooked this part of the service procedure especially if it acts as a reminder to all of us to be mindful of the effect a blocked air filter can have, especially given that my truck is out virtually every day in woods or up mountain bike tracks in, at times, really dusty conditions.

I did check on a turbo website and one of the common reasons given for oil in the turbo is the negative pressure caused by a dirty filter.

Hopefully a cheap fix for less than a tenner! There is still a little smoke but I'm hoping that's the remaining bit of oil which has collected in the turbo pipe.

Added to that, I've just fitted a new boost pin, so the Doka fair flies along!

Many thanks for your suggestions Dave.

[dave friday]

Hmm,a vaccume gauge would be useful diagnosing a blocked air filter,i think I need a boost/vaccume gauge!!