Seating Rings
 

2001, SL2, 1.9L, 103k miles.

Pulled the engine and did a rebuild back in the fall. I've put about 2500 miles on it, post rebuild, and the thing drinks oil. Constantly smokes as well. I've had a few people tell me rings aren't seated...if they're not seated by now, how do I get them to seat?

They SHOULD be fully seated by now. Did you do any hard running in the first 500 miles or so? I've always driven one like I'm going to drive it from day one. Soft accelerations followed by wide open accelerations for about 5 seconds. I do that for the first 500 miles. I've never had one drink oil. Stupid question, I'm sure, but are you POSITIVE you got them in the right position on the pistons and now upside down? No offense intended, but I have to ask. It's easy enough to do if you get distracted. Also, was there a ridge at the top of the cylinder? If so, the engine needs to be bored over sized or replaced. This dude give an excellent demonstration and explanation of how to install the rings and the position they need to be in. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/s...0&action=click

So I had time to do a little investigating this past weekend. I've been driving my truck in the meantime. Pulled all the plugs and did a loose visual inspection. Plugs/cylinders #2-4 are in fantastic shape, the plug for #1, however, was damn near fouled out and I could see oil on top of the piston when I shined my light in there. To answer your questions, I did not do any driving like you suggested above, and the rings were all in properly. The night I put them in I had a few buddies over, and as soon as I put the rings in, I handed the piston off to be double checked, and then he handed it off to the third person to triple check. Everything was looked at three times before we installed anything because I did not want to have to do it all over again. So I'm curious now if maybe there is an issue with the rings for cylinder #1? Maybe one broke when I compressed them to slide the piston in the cylinder? The old pistons looked in pretty good shape, and the only reason I replaced pistons/rings was because I had the motor apart so I figured, might as well. The car currently has 103k miles.

I tore an engine down that burned oil on one cylinder only. I found perfect rings on all the other cylinders and found the oil burner to be missing one oil scraper. The oil control ring is the bottom ring, I suspect that you may have damaged part of the multi part ring. Some are cast and some styles have two wipers and an expansion piece underneath pushing out towards the cylinder. It is easy to damage an oil ring. I would tear it apart and re-ring #1, the other three are good.

You didn't answer my question about the ridge, although I'm guessing there wasn't one with 3 of 4 cylinders being good. I'm going to go along with Andy on this one. BUT, what kind of shape are the valves in? Maybe a valve seal leaking?

I think that's what I'm gonna do...just re-ring #1 and see what happens.

Sorry, that one slipped by, but there was no ridge. When I took the head off, all the valves looked in pretty good shape. I initially thought valve seals, but the amount of oil it burns and the amount of smoke that comes out of the exhaust, I'm starting to believe it's got to be a ring issue in the #1 cylinder.

Well, since there's no ridge, I agree with re-ringing #1 and see what happens. Did you check the bore measurement for wear?