Diesel Oil Burning

[Rich]

I made a post sometime ago regarding my Maestro 500 Diesel van, and that it seemed very smokey. Well, it hasn't really got any better, I was hoping some good runs would sort it out, but its still noticable through the back window when I put my foot down, or change down a gear and "give 'er some wellie" when going up a steep hit for example.

I have put through a bottle of Wynns Injector Cleaner recenlty as well.

I have also been noticing what is compared to the 1.3 a dramatic oil loss. Every couple of hundred miles I have to fill the Perkins back up with oil, and so far have had to put 3 litres worth through it, today I bought a 5 litre bottle rather than keep buying 1 litre ones! On a long journy I can tell she is low on oil, as you can smell the engine, and if pushing her on the motorway say 80mph she is not that keen on it.

The thing is, she sounds fine (to me), and does run well, starts without a hitch and is returning very good fuel economy. I was wondering if there was a known gasket or oil seal or somthing that may cause her to burn oil. I know there is a slight leak on the oil pressure switch near the oil filter, but I cant see it losing this amount of oil through that.

Has anyone got any thoughts? If there is a simple enough fix that would be great, otherwise I will see about a mod to put a ballcock in the sump and let it fill up like a toilet cistern!!

TIA, Rich

[steve smith]

it could be piston rings take it she is not a turbo diesel? and also one other thing what is the mileage ?

[H48HPE]

our diesel maestro had a smoke problem, on aceleration, and on start up. wasnt too bad on oil, we just put it down to unburnt diesel.

Im running a renault van from work at the moment, that will sit at 80 all day, anything faster and your killing it. maybe your van is maxed out at 80 too, they wernt built as speed machines. as for oil problems, sounds to me like its got some wear in its bores, probably caused by fast running, people say that diesels are indestructable, they arnt, someone where i work was ruining a van every couple of weeks (he now has a hire van :laugh: , trouble is if your vans been a company van at some stage it could have been treated to the same sort of thing.

[Rich]

I have a sneaky suspicion now to the mileage issue, the clock says 91k nearly 92k. Its a normally aspirated diesel, no turbo. I certainly dont make a habit of thrashing it or doing 80mph, but you have to try it to see what it does, if it can cope and that sort of thing.

Somthing else I forgot to mention, when I gave it the first servie when I got it, there was a pool of oil in the airfilter, could this be a high pressure thing? Also, when removing the oil fill cap when the engine is warm, there is smoke/steam or somthing like that that comes out the filler.

Rich

[E_T_V]

The leak on the oil pressure switch will get much worse when the engine is revving (rather than idling) so that may be worth a check, as the oil pressure at idle is probably half that of it running at speed.

Also check for holes in the sump etc as mine has several.

Smoke is normal for a diesel when giving it some welly, so ,ong as it passes the MOT I'd not worry.

Have you tried the really concentrated injector cleaner routine yet?
I.e., fill the fuel filter half full of injector cleaner with the engine hot, bleed the system. Start the engine and hold it on its rev limiter for 20 seconds or so to give the injectors a HUGE dose of cleaner.

[steve smith]

is there water in teh top of the filler cap it sounds liek head gasket to me my monty dlx turbo went liek that til lthe turbo wnet POP :laugh: :laugh:

[H48HPE]

is the crankcase breather system ok?

could also be a symptom of a broken ring, and or cylinder bore wear if its blowing oil through

[E_T_V]

I have a sneaky suspicion now to the mileage issue, the clock says 91k nearly 92k. Its a normally aspirated diesel, no turbo. I certainly dont make a habit of thrashing it or doing 80mph, but you have to try it to see what it does, if it can cope and that sort of thing.

Somthing else I forgot to mention, when I gave it the first servie when I got it, there was a pool of oil in the airfilter, could this be a high pressure thing? Also, when removing the oil fill cap when the engine is warm, there is smoke/steam or somthing like that that comes out the filler.

Rich

My van is nearly art 200K and used to be a builkders van at some point so has been thrashed all the time I suspect. Still it goes alright and doesn't seem to use much oil yet.

Oil in the air filter is fairly normal, mine has it too. Steam coming from the oil cap is bad news, but oil vapour is normal. (do the hoses get hard when the engine is started from cold? - if so I suspect the headgasket is dead/dying).
If you are at MGM you can have a laff at how knackered mine is.

[MGTurbo]

I have a sneaky suspicion now to the mileage issue, the clock says 91k nearly 92k. Its a normally aspirated diesel, no turbo. I certainly dont make a habit of thrashing it or doing 80mph, but you have to try it to see what it does, if it can cope and that sort of thing.

Somthing else I forgot to mention, when I gave it the first servie when I got it, there was a pool of oil in the airfilter, could this be a high pressure thing? Also, when removing the oil fill cap when the engine is warm, there is smoke/steam or somthing like that that comes out the filler.

Rich


lol @ 90k. Perkins prima is tough as anything, i reckon even a thrashed one would do 150k and many more will do over 200k with ease. Oil in the bottom of the oil filter housing seems to be normal, mine has had this since i got it, it uses 1/2 a litre every 1000k miles, now at 135k. It does sound like a breather problem to me. You should notice lots of blue smoke at the rate its using.

Gareth

[Jack]

I was always led to believe that in diesels, worn bores normally lead to diesel in the sump (detectable by smell and a reduction in viscosity). The high compression ratio of a diesel can force diesel into the sump and may be pressurising the sump if you have blocked breather pipes. Maybe clean the engine on top and bottom with a jet wash, allow to dry and then go for a run to see if you've got any leaks.

[Rich]

Thankyou for so many replies!

Well, heres what I have done for the time being, I gave her an oil and filter change yesterday, I tried to get a new oil pressure switch but they didn't have one (surprise surprise), but I took the old one out, cleaned it up and put it back in with a bit of hermatite on the end so it should seal it up now, so far so good on that one, no sign of any oil dripping down the filter yet!

I have reset the trip, and will see how many miles I can do before I have to fill it up with oil again. I looked through the Haynes manual yesterday to find info on the breather system, but it was not very clear, I am assuming that there are only two pipes, one from the sump to the oil fill canister thing, and another from the mushroom shaped thing on the oil fill to the air filter top pipe? I assume I just have to take these off, clear them out and put them back?

There is, I noticed a fair bit of oil on the front of the block, but I think this is due to my misguided attempts to get the oil in the filler without a funnel, and always missing on the first bit.

I renewed the coolent, and did the hard hose test, in fact i ran it until the fan cut in, which took about half an hour, but the hoses didn't get hard in that time, so I think I am clear on the head gasket side of things.

This I am most pleased about, the gearchange has been like stirring a rice pudding since I got the van, you end up getting friendly with your passenger when you went for first and second, some of the gears were not so easy to get, and even in a gear you could wobble the stick like mad.

It seems that on the joint where the linkage meets the box, at some point the original roll pin has broken. It was replaced with a stupidly small UNF nut and bolt, which allowed excesive sidewards movement of the stick and rod. Simply stuck an 8mm (perfect fit) bolt and nylock in there, and I have the slickest easiest gearchange ever! It makes it so much easier to drive, I was well chuffed with myself!! :D :D :D So if anyone has any problems with a sloppy change on the Honda box, now you know what to do!

Also found a very good way to imobilise it, remove fuse A3 (I think it is) to the stop solonoid then try and start it! May well mod this into a somthing with a switch!!

Rich

[Rich]

Well, after 500 miles, the oil level has not dropped :D :D :D only problem now is I appear to be loosing coolent, its not noticable in the expansion tank, but there is always a drop forming on the bottom of the timing belt cover by the pully, this had better not be the waterpump on its way out, if it is, it will have to wait!!!

Rich

[B18 GPC]

Erm .. you say you changed oil or not ? but in ... 3.5 ltrs is it on one of them .. ? but it in with a bottle of oil cleaner system cleaner ect , then drain it , and fill her up again (with oil) .


Or go to a road near your house thats quiet and not going to moan about accesive revving .. and sit for about 5 mins futs revving live mad .

ive watched ma dad do a diesel mot once at his work and he revs them a bit to clear them out . :horror:

[mgdavid]

>>>Last edited by E_T_V : Yesterday at 22:50. Reason: Edited to make sense out of the text speak
=== nice try Daniel but I fear you failed - most of it is still incomprehensible to me :giveup:

[E_T_V]

:D I only converted the Text speak, not the gramatical errors or sentance structure. I couldn't make much sense of it myself. (And looking at the garbage I type at times that is saying something!)

[F690OTF(RIP)]

How about this:

"Erm... did you say you changed the oil or not? Put in about... 3.5 litres is it on one of them? Then add a bottle of oil system cleaner, then drain it, then fill it up with oil again.

Or go to a road near your house in which the residents aren't going to moan about excessive revving, and sit there for about five minutes revving like mad.

I've watched my dad do a diesel MoT once at his work, and he revs them a bit to clear them out."

[MGTurbo]

How about this:

"Erm... did you say you changed the oil or not? Put in about... 3.5 litres is it on one of them? Then add a bottle of oil system cleaner, then drain it, then fill it up with oil again.

Or go to a road near your house in which the residents aren't going to moan about excessive revving, and sit there for about five minutes revving like mad.

I've watched my dad do a diesel MoT once at his work, and he revs them a bit to clear them out."

Yep, perfect! Took me 10 seconds to read instead of 10 minutes, and actually looks like you know what your talking about :cool:

[Rich]

Yes I did change the oil and filter, and replaced the coolent I also took out the oil pressure switch, cleaned it up and wound it back in with a smear of hermitite on the back end of the thread.

I think maybe it was never regulary serviced before, hence the amount of oil in the air filter (its not got nearly as bad as it was when I bought it), I gave it a major service when I got it, oil, air and oil filter, coolent, thermostat, timing belt, and 2000 miles later another oil and filter and coolent change seems to have made the world of difference. Maybe I unbunged the breather system by doing it? Still, panic is over thats the main thing! :D

[dutch-van-driver]

Hi,

Just wanted to tell that changing the oil and filter made a huge difference in the oil consumption of my car (700L van 2.0 prima). It used to "consume" about 1 ltr every 800 km (I guess about 500 miles). I have driven about 400 miles since the change and the level didn't drop (as far as I could see). This includes long trips so there shouldn't be any water in the oil as well.

I filled it up with 20W50 and added Wynss supercharge (just to be sure) with the change. I filled it with 5 liter allthough no more then 2.5 liter cam out. So probably the oil consumption was even higher then I guessed at the start of this posting.

All together I'm very happy with the engine.

Marc

[TheBaldMonk]

The Monty I have is a turbo diesel ex MOD ex taxi with over 140,000 on the clock.

When testing what it'll do (necessary) I had it at 105 indicated without smoking, a big cloud when first putting the pedal to the floor and thats it.

The Renault 19 1.9 td has shown 120 and acts the same. For information both are at about the same milage but the Renault is a 95 M the Monty's a 94 L (give or take 1000) and the Monty feels like it's got load more life, the Renault's knackered.

The prima engine should do FAR more than 90,000