I am my brother's mechanic, and for a while now his car has been burning a lot of oil. There is always a residue on the rear fascia that the water beads on when it gets wet. The engine has about 130k on it. I was told by a local engine shop that it's probably the piston's oil rings that are froze/shot. I thought that it might be the valve guides, but he seemed to strongly disagree....

Does anyone have first hand experience with this issue?

 

Generally speeking, worn rings will cause smoke more under acceleration and worn valve seals will cause smoke under deceleration when the manifold vacuum is high.

 

Why don't you do a compression test if you want to know if the rings are bad.

 

Ya, a compression test is actually in the line-up of things to do along with the valve cover gasket set and the dreaded oil-pan gasket. I am going to check out the compression this weekend.

There is just some smoke on acceleration, not deceleration.....So, I pretty sure it's just the rings. Valve guides should be fine.

 

Ya, a compression test is actually in the line-up of things to do along with the valve cover gasket set and the dreaded oil-pan gasket. I am going to check out the compression this weekend.

There is just some smoke on acceleration, not deceleration.....So, I pretty sure it's just the rings. Valve guides should be fine.