Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 14:56:50 -0700
Reply-To: "T.P. Stephens" <doktortim@ROCKISLAND.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "T.P. Stephens" <doktortim@ROCKISLAND.COM>
Subject: Re: Question to a diesel expert... :o)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hi all!
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Hi, Syl,
I know enough about the beast to not claim to be an expert because
the more you know the more you know you don't know. Does that count???
______________
I own a 1982 1.6l TD vanagon westy. Everything seems ok with my engine
execpt oil consumption.
________________
Congratulations!!! Others aren't so fortunate.
________________
It takes almost 1 quart every 300 miles.
The compression is 450 psi on 2 cyl and 475 psi on the other ones. I see no
oil leak and the engine runs very good.
______________
Check again for the leaks. The protection pan underneath that motor has a
whole
bunch of 2 inch (sorry, I mean 50 mm) foam sound deadening pad on it and
will probably soak up several quarts of oil before showing as a spot on the
driveway. It's not that difficult to remove and I won't accept that you KNOW
there are no leaks unless you remove the belly pan and apply a combination
of light and eyeball to the bottom side of the motor and give that foam a
squeeze to see how much crude is therein contained.
If you see oil on the bottom of the motor, clean the whole motor with Gunk or
such from the top, then wipe down the bottom of the motor. Start the motor and
let it idle and at the same time employ the combination light and eyeball
technique and try to trace back from the first drop you see. Ya got a
half circle plug at the back of the valve cover that can get hard and leak
all over the backside of the motor. By the time it gets down to the pan it's
all over the place.
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here are the conditions how i tested the consumption:
45-50 degrees F outside air temp.
Oil grade 15w 40 for diesel
75% flat road
25% Moderate hills where i had to shift to 3 gear to go up some of them at
40 mph.
Never exceeding 62 mph.
I know that small TD engine must work very hard to move that 2 tons body but
i find that oil consumption a little excessive.
Someone has ideas about that?
_________________
So nice to have empirative evidence. DeCarte would be proud of you.
Now we KNOW fer sure this wasn't happening when you were competing
in the 1.6 Liter Turbo Diesel MPV Division of the Le Mans 24 hours.
Those blazing 100kph runs down the Mulsanne Straight can really shoot
up the oil uptake.
Check the tailpipe. Anything besides dry black carbon there??? If it's oily
you could have valve and/or valve guide wear or the oil control rings could
be shot even though the compression rings test OK. Pull the crankcase breather
hose and check for restriction. This could cause a rise in pressure that
pushes
oil out any or all seals. Pull the air cleaner to see if oil film
is present where that breather hose is attached. You could be burning that
much
without much smoke. If the valve guides are bad, you would expect some smoke
while compression breaking down a hill although with a turbo there ain't
much vakuum going on so that's a long shot.
Doktor Tim
Maintenance Repair and Restoration of European Vehicles
San Juan Island, WA
