Well, I got the motor going, but it burns an incredible amount of oil, about 1.5 quarts every 200 miles. After I turn off the car, there is oil smoke inside the intake manifold. There are oil droplets coming out of the tailpipes as well. I'm thinking it is from the rings not scraping the oil off the cylinder walls. I was told that this may be caused by my Diamond pistons and rings, and their poor design. My Diamond pistons only had four oil return holes on the bottom ringland. Anyone ever heard of this before. I don't have time to tear the motor down again until december at the earliest. Are there any temporary solutions to reduce the oil consumption until then? I'm running 10w-40 Castrol GTX in it right now, can switching to a synthetic help reduce oil consuption? Or what about a 50 weight oil? Any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

Leave the regular oil in it for now until you figure something out. Assuming the correct piston/wall clearance was achieved and the rings set up properly, I'd look first at he PCV setup. The motor could be sucking the oil through the PCV. Also, make sure the intake manifold is torqued down properly and there aren't any bad seals that could be letting oil seep past. If all this checks in ok, you may have a bad valve seal that didn't swell.

And of course a compression test may be in good order at this point obviously. good luck

Jason

 

I had the same amount of oil consumption from my ls1. Then 2 weeks ago, it blew! Becareful!

 

I sure as hell hope that doesn't happen. I will continue to run dino oil in it and hope things get better. I've heard stories of oil consumption ending after around 1000 miles or so... I hope this is what happens, or else it's good bye 427!

 

You getting any detonation? Definitely check out the PCV system and see if the oil is coming from there. If not, then it's getting past the rings.

 

Well there is a little oil in the PCV tube, but I think that's normal. It has the LS6 PCV conversion. Anyways, I dont think the PCV can injest that much oil. I'm definitly betting on the rings

 

Hopefully you didn't wash the rings out with your bad reluctor wheel?

 

How does washing out of the rings happen, and how does it affect oil consumption? Does it hurt the rings or the cylinder walls, or both? Basically, yes, the rings in cylinders 1,2,3, and 6 got a nice shower of gasoline with the bad reluctor wheel...

This blows

 

How do you knwo that happened? You tore it down again?
Wow I feel for you man! Thats alot of work....
Be patient......

 

What part # ring set are you runnin. You don't have a low tension oil ring by chance do ya? Might wanna give Diamond a call. Hopefully I am wrong but I don't think that much oil consumption is gonna go away. Have you pulled the plugs yet to see which ones might be burnin oil?

 

Throw away the PCV and just run a breather.Also back the timing down.

 

cant you just run the **** out of it to seat the rings

 

I would have broken the motor in hard. I think that if youre going to be building a big block motor wo withstand hundreds of HP, then you should break it in like it is going to be driven. If not, the rings will not seal as they should to get used to the use/abuse the motor is going to put up with.

 

I hope there is no truth to this as I am running a so called "off the shelf" piston from Diamond for my 427.

 

I personally haven't heard of Diamond pistons causing this kind of thing in their inherent design. If they're that bad of a piston and ring setup, so many people wouldn't run them.

 

Diamond pistons are fine, there's nothing wrong with them. First thing I'd do is ditch the pcv system completely, do a compression check to make sure you didn't do any damamge when you had the problems, and then try running it some more and see what that gets you.

 

Another thing I forgot to tell you in the pm is that literally the day after I got my car out of the shop w/ the new motor, I moved to N.J. and drove the car on I-95 for 7 hours cruising at 1800rpm in 6th gear. I wish I would have had time to run it hard and break it in around town. I was just like you, oil on the rear bumper and everything. But like I said, it took awhile but it's good to go now. Give it a little while and try 20w50 if you still have issues. I'm still going to go with a vaccum pump setup. I finally found a shop (well, another member did) that will make them. Should be worth a good bit of hp.

 

I'm going on a 320 mile trip with it tomarrow. I have 12 quarts of oil in the back seat. We'll see what happens I guess.

 

If you fuel washed the cylinders bad enough it could have ruined your rings. Basically if you are dumping fuel into the cylinders it rinses the oil film off of the cylinder wall causing the rings to scrape the cylinders and damage both the hone finish as well as the rings. If that happened, it might improve somewhat with time, but weill never be right. In the worst case scenario it could also have chipped the moly out of the top ring.

 

It's not the pistons and rings. I ran them in my 427 and they were fine. Check valve seals or rings that are damaged. Good luck.