These older engines always used oil, 250 miles a pint often normal after a few miles. They also suck oil down the inlet guides, Rover fitted a lot with Aluminium bronze guides, we made a batch of them in 1967. The pistons are oval by five thou normal, we used to expand the pistons to take up rattle. Use four ring pistons, we used to buy special rings, as the rings flutter in the grooves, and pump the oil, so one thou gaps on the side helps. Do not use synthetic oils, they used to use Castrol GP sae 50. The engines are heavy breathers too. The crank seals also tend to weep. Make sure you are using Low-Ex pistons too. Hepolites were standard as far as I remember. We used to make tooling for Rover and Churchill Tools.
Very Interesting, I also had a couple of these jobs in the late 70's where the thing consumed more oil than it should, I found that the Valve guides were not sealing properly and that the Stem seals were just not strong enough on the inlet valves to stop the suck through, If I remember corectly, We fitted another brand of guide seal, from a Jag, Or maybe a triumph 2.5 PI type I think that minimised the consumption.
Hi I am an old timer using my wife’s account. I had this engine in a Rover and used to use it back and forward to work and around town, I just chugging round it would use at minimum of a pint of oil every week. So I took it to a Rover expert I know, a guy about 70 years old. When I told him the problem all he said was yes normal. He explained it was to do with the oil control rings and engine design. You will never stop it, he says it was designed in as upper cylinder lubricant and also the rings gumming up. He said take it for a long run every week and kick its arse❤ 15:59 , it will then be fine. Take it on a long run and it will be no problem. It turned out I did a 1,000 miles in 5 days most of dual carriageway or motorway. In that 1,000 miles it did not use a drop of oil. It is not an answer for you but check how and where he drives maybe same problem, I have no idea but I stopped worrying and gave it oil when it needed and did as he said, I have to say it was a lot better. Just never leave it ticking over for a long time, do it yourself fog bank. Cheers Dave.
We had one in a land rover in the 1970's. It was a smoker and was only used to pick up stuff in town for the saw mill I worked at .so it covered about 100miles per week .The Mills motor mechanic put new rings in it and was still the same.
Needs to be getting well paid. Also need another in the wings as John isn't getting any younger. Be nice if somebody was learning from him too. The old school ways fit in with these older designs quite well.
Many years ago when starting out as a mechanic I rebuilt one of these with seasoned mechanic not long before he retired. A great tutorial. One thing I remember is the oil consumption he said it would have and how it would suck in oil on the overrun and when the throttle was opened the car behind would disappear in a cloud of smoke. He and the others said it needed the thickest gear oil available. Naively I went and collected 1 gallon on EP140 from the stores....needless to say I was stopped just before it was put in. We then filled it with mineral oil , 20W/ 50 I believe. I imagine if modern synthetic oils were used it would be like a battleship laying smoke.
Just saw a video where the builder had a similar issue with oil consumption. He tried everything and eventually the piston mfg said send the pistons back. They found the piston ring groove was too deep letting the ring get excess oil behind and work its way around. Check ring to ring groove width and depth. Check with ring and piston mfg both to see how much back relief there should be in the back of ring to piston groove.
Hi Lee, Jon and Isaak ! From reading comments below of those experienced with this model, it appears to be normal to consume a lot of oil... Of course this may be accepted as a design flaw, but it should be fixable by identifying whether it's only the rings or guides allowing oil into combustion chamber. Since it's owner has another running one as a good baseline, see about doing a set of leak down tests on each cylinder at various stroke lengths if possible, to see if the rings leak steadily thoughout range of travel and compare to the disassembled motor by making a block off plate. Make sure that has a good face sealing o-ring and can be bolted separately to each cylinder ( and might possibly fit the head too ? ) Specifically it needs a tee fitting for both compression guage and vent valve installation. You can then pressurize/vent each cylinder and move through stroke length to see if there is a significant loss of pressure at TDC vs BDC or intermediary lengths. Chances are the design flaw can be remedied by careful selection and fitment of rings and metal finishes, you can also measure gas pressure coming thru dipstick tube if its oilsump is closed up, or if not, invert on engine stand and both see/hear blowby occurring directly. Should make for good informative video and perhaps create a solution to this accepted occurence...
10:24 The relatively clean piston tops indicate oil coming past the rings. (The oil washes the carbon off the tops) I'd like to see a close up of the hone cross hatch as well as the ring faces to see how they are wearing.
Nice words spoken about Issac; he might see this vlog and hear them ;) A bad PCV valve, which is designed to let air escape when crankcase pressure is too high, can also cause burning oil.
Make sure that the Rover is using straight oil, and take it out for a good thrashing. Had the same problem with a Series 3 straight 6 LandRover, good thrashing sorted it out, followed by a new oil and filter.
Hi Lee, have run the F head Rovers for years, they do use oil. There is 1 gallon difference between high and low on the dipstick, the thinking was that they could do 3000 miles between services without having to top up. Remember the inlet valves do have stem seals, they are in the guides themselves about ⅛" down from the top. They are o rings and they go very hard and difficult to spot, need hooking out with a pick. Mine is currently doing about 300 miles to the pint of oil.
Great selection of engines going through the shop with a very interesting looking one outside. Isaac is a great worker with lots of knowledge being gained. Best wishes, Bob M. South Wales
Might be time for you guys to build a basic engine test cell! Nothing expensive just some rails with multiple mounts for different engine mounts so you can mount any engine and run it after building. A haltec ect and some basic electrical components to run carb and fuel injector motors a fuel cell and pump and a laptop to load base maps.. that way you can supply test data and short video of the engine running upon collection.. I'm pretty sure you can buy testing cells but should not be super difficult to build a basic test cell.. that way you are 100% of the build before releasing it back to the customer. It might be helpful for these customers trying to scam a free build and it's proof to the court the engine was running properly before it was collected
About 20 year's ago a woman had a VX SS commodore V8 , 2006 it used over a liter of oil for 250km 😂 mechanic told her it was normal, 😂,thanks for sharing, all the best to yous and your loved ones
Hope to catch you at Bideford car show this weekend but, Ive got a thing at Clovelly in the morning, a possible church tower visit at Buckland Brewer and they have set a field out to test the self driving tractor out on the farm here at BuckBrew oh and my disco3 needs fixing LOL
I believe this is the 3 Ltr Rover engine. Dad had a 62 car in 62 and it always used oil. It would blow smoke out after over run, the longer the over run the more it blew out. We thought it is was valve seals but only a guess
The Rover engine is an “F” head Originally fitted to various Rovers and the Land Rover series 2 for export. The original bores were half chromed so if you use a chromed oil ring / ring set they took forever, up to 10k miles, to bed the oil rings in. Often the answer was to deglaze the bores and leave the new/old rings in, risky but it worked most of the time. Either that or “BonAmi” the running engine to deglaze them. When resleeving these in the old days you used to use a half sleeve that was high in chrome. A Rover genuine part. You need to use a cast iron oil ring / ring set so the rings wear in, and get the taper on the rings the correct way around. Biggest issue is the road draft crankcase venting, you do not get a really positive ventilation to support the modern piston and ring designs that rely on pcv action to draw oil from the bores through the ring slots and the pistons. So you can end up with multiple issues from using modern components in heritage designs. The useless info repository is full of this stuff. Good luck and take care.
Really good sound info and very much my thoughts also though have no personal experience of this particular engine. From my own experience even modern Japanese motors had big issues with piston design and excessive oil consumption caused by blocked, drain holes that were too small behind the oil control ring. Surprisingly, both Toyota and Nissan had these issues in the early/mid 2000's so not only ring piston rings but piston design can also play a part in oil consumption along with what was a very basic and primitive crank case vent system. Modern vehicles rarely give an indication of high oil usage, the cat usually cleans the smoke and fumes up before it reaches the tail pipe and the only warning the owner will get is when the oil light comes on and the engine starts to rattle. If the original engines were poor from the start in this respect then Lee has little chance of correcting the issue and all he can do is make sure the basics are right, engine oil type not modern low viscosity , correct oil level etc etc l and as close to technical original spec as possible, liner material, matched to ring material.
@@55peterf The Land Rover 4 and 6 cylinders once they were run in typically had oil usage up to 1 qt in 3k miles, dependent on type of usage, the ones that were used in operational areas were required to idle while in said areas so used the full quart. The ones used in normal driving barely used a pint. Our running books showed any top up’s so we could track daily usage. The Rolls Royce B81 engines, in specialty vehicles 😇 (“F” head, straight 8’s, 427 cubic inch), were much the same but lower oil usage cause they used a different bore material and cast iron ring package. A truly quiet engine if you disconnected the air brake compressor.
The attention to detail on the cosworth engines is impressive I suppose that's were the money is being spent I would be a happy bunny to receive a polished engine but it's not in my dna to spend so much maby if I win the lottery.
I think you can try measuring the bore roughness you leave with the honing. For your oil consumption problem. There are good vidio,s on youtube about wat it should be for good sealing rings.
Jag engine oil consumption; with trying two different ring manfacturers, you would not think the rings are the problem. Could the pistons be rocking causing instability in the rings. Might try Line2Line coatings abraidable skirt coating. The pistons then go in kind of snug. Without the usual oil film, the coating abraids and the clearance opens up a bit. When oil can get in the coating quits wearing, leaving the minimum piston clearance needed. Brings piston slap noise way down.
Years ago we used to do a lot of A series engines re bored new everything and the only way to stop them smoking and using oil was to use CORDS piston rings. Wether at the time our machine shop had a bad batch or not we'll never know, but we stuck with cord rings no more problems. This was back in the 80s and 90s
Had same problem on a bedford 466 diesel engine replaced piston with different ones that had the bottom oil ring missing which was below the gugin pin it burnt oil like hell had to replace with pistons with 2 oil control rings
Couldn't believe it when you said JP pistons. Just rebuilt and fitted for the second time a Dolomite Sprint engine that smoked excessively and used a lot of oil. Rebuilt with JP pistons and 4 piece oil control rings (didn't like them) used a sump full of oil in first 400 miles. Stripped and built again with Grants rings on the JP pistons. Honed again, ring gaps etc etc. Just had a message from owner today to say it's smoking again! Do we just wait a bit longer? - 500 miles usually enough to know everything is good or not.
Jp I've used for racing worked fine. Need for freater tolerance mainly to allow for piston expansion when hot. Looking at what you're dealing with appears to be engines at fault not getting hot enough, shame head not on could've done a compression test
I had that F head in an ex military landrover in Australia. 20w/50 oil drove it flat out everywhere hardly used any oil. Never needed a top up between services. What compression is it running? They were typically a very low compression engine. The head has probably been skimmed half a dozen times by now and different pistons may have higher compression.
Hello Lee, Just a thought, I susspect the the problem with your oil burning, is the exhaust valves in the block. Is the camshaft open to the crankcase? If it is, I suspect that the valve stems will be washed in far more oil than OHV engines. Oil will be sucked in during induction, I suspect John has the same problem with his Austine 7. On the older A series engines, they had composite caps that fitted over the end of the guides to compensate for low tolerance engineering. This may help, as would extra long valve guides. Modern very low viscosity oils are also a problem, personally I would use a 15W/40, or you could always resort to Castrol R, That will soon gum up the valve stems!!!!. Good luck, Kind regards, Tony Marsh.
Cheers Lee, the old Rover sounds like the wrong oil or, if it was my Car I would have driven it for about 40 minutes once it’s up to temperature in high gear low revs and make the Engine lug. Failing that, check the Crankcase venting out, check as much as you can while the Engine is still in the Car. Only remove the Engine when you’ve identified the problem.
Two points it could be a ring bedding problem both with this engine and the Morris. If it's still running take the air filter off, get it running about 2500 rpm and shake some Vim down the air intake then take it for a hard run. This should deglaze the bores and bed it in . Re the Rover I seem to remember that on some of these models o rings were fitted into a groove machined in the inlet valve guides which prevented the oil going down. Also original hepotite pistons had a skirt ring which was pegged but I expect Thorntons have long sold out of these.
Lee, I am not a licensed mechanic but I do use a little common sense now and then, and mine tells me maybe those Rover engines were designed to use 4 ring pistons instead of three and they just need to have a periodic dose of a fuel additive that cleans the rings.
If I am remembering correctly (more than 50 years ago) we had a number of Rover / Land Rover semi-side motors that were giving the exact issue that you are talking about. It was around the time that multi-grade oils came out and they were all carrying "special additives" and these motors DO NOT LIKE EITHER OF THOSE THINGS. But even with a straight SAE30 or 40 oil, they still had issues. One day someone broke an oil ring and we discovered that the edges that you grind to set the ring gap were shiny - no file marks etc. You need to remember that these were solid cast iron rings and the only way that this could happen was if the ring was being closed during normal operation and the only thing that could do that was oil pressure forcing the ring into the groove. If you have a look at any cast iron ring today you will notice that there is a small half-moon groove along the surface that meets with the bottom of the ring groove in the piston as well as more slots through the ring - and the modern pistons have more drain holes than old timer pistons. Also, modern single piece oil rings have much more oil escape areas than the old time units did. Simply using a modern 3 part oil ring (although more efficient than a cast iron ring in most applications) will not help much because the excessive oil still does not have enough place to easily drain out. Simply drilling more holes through the bottom of the ring housing might seem like the obvious answer BUT essentially you are adding more perforations which creates a weak zone and the crown of the piston may separate from the skirt which would be really bad. Hope I have been of some help here but you will have to make the final choice. Have a good weekend people.
I don’t know how you do it, when I was building engines (lot of classics) I used to write everything spec wise in a book so if any issues in future I had some reference. Was all put into a build folder with pics an given to customer. Kept my own book so if car got sold an next owner had a problem
Lee, When you go to the show this Sunday, keep an eye out for some colleagues of mine, Devon and Cornwall 4x4 Response. I do believe some members of our North Devon team are going to be there.
my bet is pistons and rings issues You can also get an over pressure in the crank case and if its got a vent to the inlet or carb it can force oil up and back into the combustion chambers
Golden rule I was told is never mix and match. When splitting the block, can you see any tell tale signs of oil getting past the piston expansion rings? Assuming you are using mineral oil. Did anyone run a compression test when the engine had reached full operating temp? Did the owner state any smoke colouration?
The pistons might have the wrong heat treating to them. Or they might not get hot enough to properly expand. Try heating them up in an oven and then measure them at different heights and for concentric roundness. I have had modern pistons put in my old ford flathead and it burned oil like crazy. Btw I’ve been a machinist for 33 years and this problem has popped up every so often
Many years ago,I rebuilt a ford major engine,used oil like mad,stripped it again,did the valves,guides again,another piston liner kit,still burning oil,in fact spitting it out the exhaust,spoke to morris oils,they recommended a oil motor blend,hey presto no more oil consumption,I could not find anything wrong with the 1st build,the engine runs very well,but if a modern oil is used,it will start using it,so it’s a straight 30 in that engine,why I don’t know,but that was the cure.
Parts, may look the same, feel the same. but are moon beams apart. Go different parts, like your cozzie engines you know what works from years of building them.
Is it possible to find out what was the oil pressure before the engine was remove. Sometimes excessive oil pressure can be the problem, it makes a lot of oil mist inside the block. I worked on large diesel engines where that's been the problem.
... I think its a matter of (as you're doing) asking the forum community on this one, as quite a few hits come up with P4 P5 Rover & JP issues with excessive oil in running in periods.
Another Toutuber "Salter engines", had talked about an engine that smoked and the problem was the depth of the ring lands, they were too deep. I know you said you checked ring lands but do you measure depth?
The amount of oil usage wasn't mentioned. Is it smoking? Are the ports or exhaust wet? Are the pistons and chambers oil washed? The only issues I have run into that caused excessive oil burning was improper microinch finish for the ring material, cylinder glazing and improper oil ring tension. Surface microinch finish has to be tested with a profilometer. Something I was shown with 3-piece oil rings, and it is hard to explain without visuals, is to squeeze the ring rail with your fingers across the diameter. The rail will cup in one direction, either up or down. If the ring is installed with the cup facing down, it will have more tension, and less tension installed with the cup up. Some shops used to install the rings in performance engines with the cup facing up to save that tiny frictional loss.
I used to rebuild older bike engines, oil consumption was always down to the owners using semi or fully synthetic. Going back to decent mineral always cured the oil loss.
To add my thoughts to the excellent comments below; I would add looking at ring tension and making sure ring gaps were at the snug end of their tolerance. All the best guys.
Hi Lee - Love the channels, both the technical aspects and the easy way you and Isaac present the channel. I also have the same Sealey units in my home workshop with LED lighting and they have made a tremendous difference to my working efficiency as well as being a pleasure to work with. However, your multi colour LED lights are really annoying and symbolic of a Peruvian knocking shop, rather than a precision engineering shop. Other than that, keep up the good work.
Looks like a lot of poeple have said what it is but I was first thinking about bottom-end clearances spraying out too much oil and over-loading the rings.
All I am seeing here, is rich running. I think that’s been a bit rich during initial running in, therefore the rings have not bedded in fully. Secondly, you need to be using engine breaking lube for the first few hundred miles, the engine also needs a good load put on it under 3,000 rpm to get the cylinder pressure to push the rings into the bores.
Add oil drain holes in oil ring lands or in large std 1s and chamfer them also fit o-ring inside inlet valve guides or some kinda seal… Or it’s the common issue of people not running in engines properly by nanny driving just babying it around cause they spent so much lol 😂 Or try different oil..
Seems some black some ok.. ld be interested in the. Fuel injection wiring loom impedances . Had a performance Opel superboss that did that...pald multiple build parts and later auto elec sad chg top loom and solved all. Check test motor after few miles!? Plugs tell you...
Just watched a Nascar builder say he had an engine that used oil at low load once, turned out the ring lands were machined too deep. Who checks that? Normally just check deep enough.
might be the type of oil the owners using causing the oil consumption might not be suitable for older engines i came across this years ago some modern oils dont work well in them
what engine oil are these two old engines running?, as it HAS to be mineral oil, old engines will never run in, using Synthetic, also, didnt you have a similar problem with an Mgb?? with blocked and duff pcv valves, this would cause similar problems
Horrible engines. My father got a new Landrover in the 60s which had the same engine. I remember that from day 1 it needed a pint of oil every time he filled tank.
Jp pistons are not so good lee, used them once and had the same issue, changed to cp and they were fine, we used to say jps pistons are like the cigarettes the smoke the same 😂😂😂
Jaguar had a real problem with the XK engine from 1948, and its oil consumption, (another 1940s design)' All sorts of piston rings were tried which had some effect, but It was only when the inlet valve guides had seals fitted that the problem was cured, so maybe this is a mod that should be done to this engine. The other thing that comes to mind is use of modern oil of a maybe too "thin" grade that will allow oil down the valve guides and past the piston rings. Of course an XK engine, being DOHC has a lot more oil sloshing around the valves than I would think the Rover engine has. The other way oil gets burnt is that the breather on these engines goes into the inlet manifold. Is the oil collector on the breather in good order ?
Of saving money. It was a cost-saving measure implemented by Rover in the day. Given the loss of reputation and the number of warranty claims, I'd say it didn't achieve what they intended.
His way of honing is so wrong his look horizontal the tool should be going up and down more than it let it to spin and make the hatches in, look at any manufacturers stock honing it looks nothing like his, his honing tool is spinning too much and not going up and down the bore correctly, how he shows people this and thinks it's right is beyond me
F head, I think the term is. I remember getting caught sledging a piston out of one of these that had come out of a 110 rover. We were going to fit it in my brother's land-rover LWB. The guy that walked up the drive as we "caressed " the piston from its bore, was the last bloke you wanted to see! Very experienced, old school guy. Stood and watched us, never said a word. The engine did a lot of miles and heavy towing when we got it rebuilt and fitted.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
These older engines always used oil, 250 miles a pint often normal after a few miles. They also suck oil down the inlet guides, Rover fitted a lot with Aluminium bronze guides, we made a batch of them in 1967. The pistons are oval by five thou normal, we used to expand the pistons to take up rattle. Use four ring pistons, we used to buy special rings, as the rings flutter in the grooves, and pump the oil, so one thou gaps on the side helps. Do not use synthetic oils, they used to use Castrol GP sae 50. The engines are heavy breathers too. The crank seals also tend to weep. Make sure you are using Low-Ex pistons too. Hepolites were standard as far as I remember. We used to make tooling for Rover and Churchill Tools.
Very Interesting, I also had a couple of these jobs in the late 70's where the thing consumed more oil than it should, I found that the Valve guides were not sealing properly and that the Stem seals were just not strong enough on the inlet valves to stop the suck through, If I remember corectly, We fitted another brand of guide seal, from a Jag, Or maybe a triumph 2.5 PI type I think that minimised the consumption.
Triumph pi s didn't have seals@@johnridley1038
Hi I am an old timer using my wife’s account. I had this engine in a Rover and used to use it back and forward to work and around town, I just chugging round it would use at minimum of a pint of oil every week. So I took it to a Rover expert I know, a guy about 70 years old. When I told him the problem all he said was yes normal. He explained it was to do with the oil control rings and engine design. You will never stop it, he says it was designed in as upper cylinder lubricant and also the rings gumming up. He said take it for a long run every week and kick its arse❤ 15:59 , it will then be fine. Take it on a long run and it will be no problem. It turned out I did a 1,000 miles in 5 days most of dual carriageway or motorway. In that 1,000 miles it did not use a drop of oil. It is not an answer for you but check how and where he drives maybe same problem, I have no idea but I stopped worrying and gave it oil when it needed and did as he said, I have to say it was a lot better. Just never leave it ticking over for a long time, do it yourself fog bank. Cheers Dave.
We had one in a land rover in the 1970's. It was a smoker and was only used to pick up stuff in town for the saw mill I worked at .so it covered about 100miles per week .The Mills motor mechanic put new rings in it and was still the same.
Isaac is a top shelf apprentice. Very dedicated and humble. He’ll go places with that 👍
Needs to be getting well paid. Also need another in the wings as John isn't getting any younger. Be nice if somebody was learning from him too. The old school ways fit in with these older designs quite well.
Many years ago when starting out as a mechanic I rebuilt one of these with seasoned mechanic not long before he retired. A great tutorial. One thing I remember is the oil consumption he said it would have and how it would suck in oil on the overrun and when the throttle was opened the car behind would disappear in a cloud of smoke. He and the others said it needed the thickest gear oil available. Naively I went and collected 1 gallon on EP140 from the stores....needless to say I was stopped just before it was put in. We then filled it with mineral oil , 20W/ 50 I believe. I imagine if modern synthetic oils were used it would be like a battleship laying smoke.
Just saw a video where the builder had a similar issue with oil consumption. He tried everything and eventually the piston mfg said send the pistons back. They found the piston ring groove was too deep letting the ring get excess oil behind and work its way around.
Check ring to ring groove width and depth. Check with ring and piston mfg both to see how much back relief there should be in the back of ring to piston groove.
Hi Lee, Jon and Isaak ! From reading comments below of those experienced with this model, it appears to be normal to consume a lot of oil... Of course this may be accepted as a design flaw, but it should be fixable by identifying whether it's only the rings or guides allowing oil into combustion chamber.
Since it's owner has another running one as a good baseline, see about doing a set of leak down tests on each cylinder at various stroke lengths if possible, to see if the rings leak steadily thoughout range of travel and compare to the disassembled motor by making a block off plate. Make sure that has a good face sealing o-ring and can be bolted separately to each cylinder ( and might possibly fit the head too ? ) Specifically it needs a tee fitting for both compression guage and vent valve installation. You can then pressurize/vent each cylinder and move through stroke length to see if there is a significant loss of pressure at TDC vs BDC or intermediary lengths. Chances are the design flaw can be remedied by careful selection and fitment of rings and metal finishes, you can also measure gas pressure coming thru dipstick tube if its oilsump is closed up, or if not, invert on engine stand and both see/hear blowby occurring directly. Should make for good informative video and perhaps create a solution to this accepted occurence...
10:24 The relatively clean piston tops indicate oil coming past the rings. (The oil washes the carbon off the tops) I'd like to see a close up of the hone cross hatch as well as the ring faces to see how they are wearing.
Nice words spoken about Issac; he might see this vlog and hear them ;) A bad PCV valve, which is designed to let air escape when crankcase pressure is too high, can also cause burning oil.
I would look into a profilometer for your honing procedure You might be finishing the cylinder to smooth or glazing the cylinders
Make sure that the Rover is using straight oil, and take it out for a good thrashing. Had the same problem with a Series 3 straight 6 LandRover, good thrashing sorted it out, followed by a new oil and filter.
Hi Lee, have run the F head Rovers for years, they do use oil. There is 1 gallon difference between high and low on the dipstick, the thinking was that they could do 3000 miles between services without having to top up. Remember the inlet valves do have stem seals, they are in the guides themselves about ⅛" down from the top. They are o rings and they go very hard and difficult to spot, need hooking out with a pick. Mine is currently doing about 300 miles to the pint of oil.
Great selection of engines going through the shop with a very interesting looking one outside. Isaac is a great worker with lots of knowledge being gained. Best wishes, Bob M. South Wales
I would say it could be flutter, and how does the crank vent on the jag engine, it could be positive crank case pressure pushing oil past the rings.
Might be time for you guys to build a basic engine test cell! Nothing expensive just some rails with multiple mounts for different engine mounts so you can mount any engine and run it after building. A haltec ect and some basic electrical components to run carb and fuel injector motors a fuel cell and pump and a laptop to load base maps.. that way you can supply test data and short video of the engine running upon collection.. I'm pretty sure you can buy testing cells but should not be super difficult to build a basic test cell.. that way you are 100% of the build before releasing it back to the customer. It might be helpful for these customers trying to scam a free build and it's proof to the court the engine was running properly before it was collected
About 20 year's ago a woman had a VX SS commodore V8 , 2006 it used over a liter of oil for 250km 😂 mechanic told her it was normal, 😂,thanks for sharing, all the best to yous and your loved ones
Hope to catch you at Bideford car show this weekend but, Ive got a thing at Clovelly in the morning, a possible church tower visit at Buckland Brewer and they have set a field out to test the self driving tractor out on the farm here at BuckBrew oh and my disco3 needs fixing LOL
I believe this is the 3 Ltr Rover engine. Dad had a 62 car in 62 and it always used oil. It would blow smoke out after over run, the longer the over run the more it blew out. We thought it is was valve seals but only a guess
The Rover engine is an “F” head
Originally fitted to various Rovers and the Land Rover series 2 for export.
The original bores were half chromed so if you use a chromed oil ring / ring set they took forever, up to 10k miles, to bed the oil rings in.
Often the answer was to deglaze the bores and leave the new/old rings in, risky but it worked most of the time.
Either that or “BonAmi” the running engine to deglaze them.
When resleeving these in the old days you used to use a half sleeve that was high in chrome. A Rover genuine part.
You need to use a cast iron oil ring / ring set so the rings wear in, and get the taper on the rings the correct way around.
Biggest issue is the road draft crankcase venting, you do not get a really positive ventilation to support the modern piston and ring designs that rely on pcv action to draw oil from the bores through the ring slots and the pistons.
So you can end up with multiple issues from using modern components in heritage designs.
The useless info repository is full of this stuff.
Good luck and take care.
Really good sound info and very much my thoughts also though have no personal experience of this particular engine. From my own experience even modern Japanese motors had big issues with piston design and excessive oil consumption caused by blocked, drain holes that were too small behind the oil control ring. Surprisingly, both Toyota and Nissan had these issues in the early/mid 2000's so not only ring piston rings but piston design can also play a part in oil consumption along with what was a very basic and primitive crank case vent system.
Modern vehicles rarely give an indication of high oil usage, the cat usually cleans the smoke and fumes up before it reaches the tail pipe and the only warning the owner will get is when the oil light comes on and the engine starts to rattle. If the original engines were poor from the start in this respect then Lee has little chance of correcting the issue and all he can do is make sure the basics are right, engine oil type not modern low viscosity , correct oil level etc etc l and as close to technical original spec as possible, liner material, matched to ring material.
@@55peterf The Land Rover 4 and 6 cylinders once they were run in typically had oil usage up to 1 qt in 3k miles, dependent on type of usage, the ones that were used in operational areas were required to idle while in said areas so used the full quart. The ones used in normal driving barely used a pint.
Our running books showed any top up’s so we could track daily usage.
The Rolls Royce B81 engines, in specialty vehicles 😇 (“F” head, straight 8’s, 427 cubic inch), were much the same but lower oil usage cause they used a different bore material and cast iron ring package.
A truly quiet engine if you disconnected the air brake compressor.
Have you thought about using a route card to plot the progress of the engines. Each operation would be ticked off as completed?
We called 'em Travelers 😊
The attention to detail on the cosworth engines is impressive I suppose that's were the money is being spent I would be a happy bunny to receive a polished engine but it's not in my dna to spend so much maby if I win the lottery.
A dizzy! Not seen one of those since I did my City & Guilds back in the 80's!
I think you can try measuring the bore roughness you leave with the honing. For your oil consumption problem. There are good vidio,s on youtube about wat it should be for good sealing rings.
Jag engine oil consumption; with trying two different ring manfacturers, you would not think the rings are the problem. Could the pistons be rocking causing instability in the rings. Might try Line2Line coatings abraidable skirt coating. The pistons then go in kind of snug. Without the usual oil film, the coating abraids and the clearance opens up a bit. When oil can get in the coating quits wearing, leaving the minimum piston clearance needed. Brings piston slap noise way down.
What are the drain holes like in the back of the oil control piston groove, drill them out a bit larger, remember the BMC marina engines, cheers
Any update on that Volvo 5 pot that was losing coolant?
Curious about that one too!
Years ago we used to do a lot of A series engines re bored new everything and the only way to stop them smoking and using oil was to use CORDS piston rings. Wether at the time our machine shop had a bad batch or not we'll never know, but we stuck with cord rings no more problems. This was back in the 80s and 90s
Had same problem on a bedford 466 diesel engine replaced piston with different ones that had the bottom oil ring missing which was below the gugin pin it burnt oil like hell had to replace with pistons with 2 oil control rings
Couldn't believe it when you said JP pistons. Just rebuilt and fitted for the second time a Dolomite Sprint engine that smoked excessively and used a lot of oil. Rebuilt with JP pistons and 4 piece oil control rings (didn't like them) used a sump full of oil in first 400 miles. Stripped and built again with Grants rings on the JP pistons. Honed again, ring gaps etc etc. Just had a message from owner today to say it's smoking again! Do we just wait a bit longer? - 500 miles usually enough to know everything is good or not.
Hi. Use cast-iron rings and fine cross hatch hone. Cheers Jim Tamworth Australia
Jp I've used for racing worked fine. Need for freater tolerance mainly to allow for piston expansion when hot. Looking at what you're dealing with appears to be engines at fault not getting hot enough, shame head not on could've done a compression test
I had that F head in an ex military landrover in Australia. 20w/50 oil drove it flat out everywhere hardly used any oil. Never needed a top up between services. What compression is it running? They were typically a very low compression engine. The head has probably been skimmed half a dozen times by now and different pistons may have higher compression.
Rover 6, stock standard issue with that engine in between burning exhaust valves 😀.
Hello Lee,
Just a thought, I susspect the the problem with your oil burning, is the exhaust valves in the block. Is the camshaft open to the crankcase? If it is, I suspect that the valve stems will be washed in far more oil than OHV engines. Oil will be sucked in during induction, I suspect John has the same problem with his Austine 7.
On the older A series engines, they had composite caps that fitted over the end of the guides to compensate for low tolerance engineering. This may help, as would extra long valve guides. Modern very low viscosity oils are also a problem, personally I would use a 15W/40, or you could always resort to Castrol R, That will soon gum up the valve stems!!!!. Good luck, Kind regards,
Tony Marsh.
Cheers Lee, the old Rover sounds like the wrong oil or, if it was my Car I would have driven it for about 40 minutes once it’s up to temperature in high gear low revs and make the Engine lug. Failing that, check the Crankcase venting out, check as much as you can while the Engine is still in the Car. Only remove the Engine when you’ve identified the problem.
Two points it could be a ring bedding problem both with this engine and the Morris. If it's still running take the air filter off, get it running about 2500 rpm and shake some Vim down the air intake then take it for a hard run. This should deglaze the bores and bed it in .
Re the Rover I seem to remember that on some of these models o rings were fitted into a groove machined in the inlet valve guides which prevented the oil going down. Also original hepotite pistons had a skirt ring which was pegged but I expect Thorntons have long sold out of these.
Absolutely brilliant ,they don't teach you that at college
You guys get a lot done for just the 3 of you
Lee, I am not a licensed mechanic but I do use a little common sense now and then, and mine tells me maybe those Rover engines were designed to use 4 ring pistons instead of three and they just need to have a periodic dose of a fuel additive that cleans the rings.
Maybe not enough drain back area in the oil ring grooves?
If I am remembering correctly (more than 50 years ago) we had a number of Rover / Land Rover semi-side motors that were giving the exact issue that you are talking about.
It was around the time that multi-grade oils came out and they were all carrying "special additives" and these motors DO NOT LIKE EITHER OF THOSE THINGS.
But even with a straight SAE30 or 40 oil, they still had issues.
One day someone broke an oil ring and we discovered that the edges that you grind to set the ring gap were shiny - no file marks etc.
You need to remember that these were solid cast iron rings and the only way that this could happen was if the ring was being closed during normal operation and the only thing that could do that was oil pressure forcing the ring into the groove.
If you have a look at any cast iron ring today you will notice that there is a small half-moon groove along the surface that meets with the bottom of the ring groove in the piston as well as more slots through the ring - and the modern pistons have more drain holes than old timer pistons.
Also, modern single piece oil rings have much more oil escape areas than the old time units did.
Simply using a modern 3 part oil ring (although more efficient than a cast iron ring in most applications) will not help much because the excessive oil still does not have enough place to easily drain out.
Simply drilling more holes through the bottom of the ring housing might seem like the obvious answer BUT essentially you are adding more perforations which creates a weak zone and the crown of the piston may separate from the skirt which would be really bad.
Hope I have been of some help here but you will have to make the final choice.
Have a good weekend people.
I don’t know how you do it, when I was building engines (lot of classics) I used to write everything spec wise in a book so if any issues in future I had some reference. Was all put into a build folder with pics an given to customer. Kept my own book so if car got sold an next owner had a problem
Are you able to get pro seal rings there where the face of the rings are groves so they don't just rely on the edge for sealing
Lee, When you go to the show this Sunday, keep an eye out for some colleagues of mine, Devon and Cornwall 4x4 Response. I do believe some members of our North Devon team are going to be there.
my bet is pistons and rings issues
You can also get an over pressure in the crank case and if its got a vent to the inlet or carb it can force oil up and back into the combustion chambers
Golden rule I was told is never mix and match. When splitting the block, can you see any tell tale signs of oil getting past the piston expansion rings? Assuming you are using mineral oil. Did anyone run a compression test when the engine had reached full operating temp? Did the owner state any smoke colouration?
The pistons might have the wrong heat treating to them. Or they might not get hot enough to properly expand. Try heating them up in an oven and then measure them at different heights and for concentric roundness. I have had modern pistons put in my old ford flathead and it burned oil like crazy. Btw I’ve been a machinist for 33 years and this problem has popped up every so often
For the Rover use proper thick “Classic” mineral oils with zinc etc…. the oil change intervals were probably 3 or 6 thousand miles anyway.
Many years ago,I rebuilt a ford major engine,used oil like mad,stripped it again,did the valves,guides again,another piston liner kit,still burning oil,in fact spitting it out the exhaust,spoke to morris oils,they recommended a oil motor blend,hey presto no more oil consumption,I could not find anything wrong with the 1st build,the engine runs very well,but if a modern oil is used,it will start using it,so it’s a straight 30 in that engine,why I don’t know,but that was the cure.
Don't forget in there day 600/700 miles to a pint was normal and a straight 30 sae oil
Parts, may look the same, feel the same. but are moon beams apart. Go different parts, like your cozzie engines you know what works from years of building them.
Is it possible to find out what was the oil pressure before the engine was remove. Sometimes excessive oil pressure can be the problem, it makes a lot of oil mist inside the block. I worked on large diesel engines where that's been the problem.
... I think its a matter of (as you're doing) asking the forum community on this one, as quite a few hits come up with P4 P5 Rover & JP issues with excessive oil in running in periods.
Another Toutuber "Salter engines", had talked about an engine that smoked and the problem was the depth of the ring lands, they were too deep. I know you said you checked ring lands but do you measure depth?
Do you not have the old pistons from the rover engine,I'm sure they had oil control rings on the piston skirt ?
Inlet over exhaust is how it was termed
Piston rings ??
And not the slot gap but the with.When to thin they could pump oil to the top off the piston.
I run across this problem on a 1967 4.2L E-type Jaguar. I'm going to email you what I found. I hope it helps.
The amount of oil usage wasn't mentioned. Is it smoking? Are the ports or exhaust wet? Are the pistons and chambers oil washed?
The only issues I have run into that caused excessive oil burning was improper microinch finish for the ring material, cylinder glazing and improper oil ring tension. Surface microinch finish has to be tested with a profilometer.
Something I was shown with 3-piece oil rings, and it is hard to explain without visuals, is to squeeze the ring rail with your fingers across the diameter. The rail will cup in one direction, either up or down. If the ring is installed with the cup facing down, it will have more tension, and less tension installed with the cup up. Some shops used to install the rings in performance engines with the cup facing up to save that tiny frictional loss.
I used to rebuild older bike engines, oil consumption was always down to the owners using semi or fully synthetic. Going back to decent mineral always cured the oil loss.
To add my thoughts to the excellent comments below; I would add looking at ring tension and making sure ring gaps were at the snug end of their tolerance. All the best guys.
Beat video in a long time!
Hi everyone. Does anyone know the details/part number and make of that scope camera. Cheers, Craig 👍🏼🙂
Originally had a problem from new as had Chrome bores and rings ,even new some used oil like it was going out of fashion…
It's an inlet over exhaust engine.
Advise the customer to replace the injectors on the transit. Dribbling injectors cause the cracked pistons
John's popped to the bank to get ripped off, 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
yeah there's a story in that ...
Banks, legal thieves.
@@daledavies2334 your dead right there
Hi Lee - Love the channels, both the technical aspects and the easy way you and Isaac present the channel. I also have the same Sealey units in my home workshop with LED lighting and they have made a tremendous difference to my working efficiency as well as being a pleasure to work with. However, your multi colour LED lights are really annoying and symbolic of a Peruvian knocking shop, rather than a precision engineering shop. Other than that, keep up the good work.
Perhaps design a better crank breather. Make a tank that lets the oil drain back into the sump instead of getting burnt.
Add a PCV system?
I think you need to make more videos of your successes. All i see are upset customers and warranty claim videos 😮
Looks like a lot of poeple have said what it is but I was first thinking about bottom-end clearances spraying out too much oil and over-loading the rings.
No
The Rover design is known as inlet over exhaust.
Correct… or “IoE”
Sound like it needs a good ragging. Should only use 20/50 mineral oil
If you bored it out more then it's gonna consume oil more isn't it. That's obvious.
That is a really interesting racing engine. It looks awfully fragile.
Cross hatch too course?
Wrong dip stick? overfill, ive had that before, calibrate the fill, then check the stick.
What oil are you running? Maybe it’s too thin.
All I am seeing here, is rich running. I think that’s been a bit rich during initial running in, therefore the rings have not bedded in fully. Secondly, you need to be using engine breaking lube for the first few hundred miles, the engine also needs a good load put on it under 3,000 rpm to get the cylinder pressure to push the rings into the bores.
Add oil drain holes in oil ring lands or in large std 1s and chamfer them also fit o-ring inside inlet valve guides or some kinda seal…
Or it’s the common issue of people not running in engines properly by nanny driving just babying it around cause they spent so much lol 😂
Or try different oil..
Seems some black some ok.. ld be interested in the. Fuel injection wiring loom impedances . Had a performance Opel superboss that did that...pald multiple build parts and later auto elec sad chg top loom and solved all. Check test motor after few miles!? Plugs tell you...
Just watched a Nascar builder say he had an engine that used oil at low load once, turned out the ring lands were machined too deep.
Who checks that? Normally just check deep enough.
Thought all old engines pre 70s used oil
might be the type of oil the owners using causing the oil consumption
might not be suitable for older engines i came across this years ago some modern oils dont work well in them
That camera can also be used for checking for polyps up your jacksi!
what engine oil are these two old engines running?, as it HAS to be mineral oil, old engines will never run in, using Synthetic, also, didnt you have a similar problem with an Mgb?? with blocked and duff pcv valves, this would cause similar problems
What's the make of the borescope please? I remember seeing it in a previous video when you did a review of it but I cant find that particular video
Oil bath air cleaner on the Rover?
Crank case breather?
Breather issue ????
Horrible engines. My father got a new Landrover in the 60s which had the same engine. I remember that from day 1 it needed a pint of oil every time he filled tank.
Jp pistons are not so good lee, used them once and had the same issue, changed to cp and they were fine, we used to say jps pistons are like the cigarettes the smoke the same 😂😂😂
👍👍
Possible try new pistols 😐
Jaguar had a real problem with the XK engine from 1948, and its oil consumption, (another 1940s design)' All sorts of piston rings were tried which had some effect, but It was only when the inlet valve guides had seals fitted that the problem was cured, so maybe this is a mod that should be done to this engine. The other thing that comes to mind is use of modern oil of a maybe too "thin" grade that will allow oil down the valve guides and past the piston rings. Of course an XK engine, being DOHC has a lot more oil sloshing around the valves than I would think the Rover engine has.
The other way oil gets burnt is that the breather on these engines goes into the inlet manifold. Is the oil collector on the breather in good order ?
Rover engine most probably out of a P4 and that type of valve arrangement was called an 'F' Head
Plastic dowels!? WTF were they thinking?
Of saving money. It was a cost-saving measure implemented by Rover in the day. Given the loss of reputation and the number of warranty claims, I'd say it didn't achieve what they intended.
What you expect from a rover.
It won't turn over .gets towed so much it thinks it's a caravan 🚐. 😂
WOW! Harsh but true!😭
Fix it properly the 1st time.
His way of honing is so wrong his look horizontal the tool should be going up and down more than it let it to spin and make the hatches in, look at any manufacturers stock honing it looks nothing like his, his honing tool is spinning too much and not going up and down the bore correctly, how he shows people this and thinks it's right is beyond me
F head, I think the term is.
I remember getting caught sledging a piston out of one of these that had come out of a 110 rover.
We were going to fit it in my brother's land-rover LWB.
The guy that walked up the drive as we "caressed " the piston from its bore, was the last bloke you wanted to see! Very experienced, old school guy. Stood and watched us, never said a word.
The engine did a lot of miles and heavy towing when we got it rebuilt and fitted.
Weslake head out of interest.
Good morning. 1st