Excessive oil burn as of May 2 I had a Buick 215 engine rebuilt and installed this past winter. I picked the car up from the shop Friday April 20th. We went through the dyno reports – 142 bhp & 185 ft. lbs. of torque at the wheels. I couldn’t be happier. He said it needs a little break in time – ‘it makes a little smoke’- and off I went. In 10 days a little smoke has become 500ml of oil every 250km and plumes of smoke from the exhaust. The shop cannot find the issue – after compression and leak down testing, they replaced valve seals. It is actually worse now. The top end ‘clacking’ from the left bank and the exhaust actually produces more – thicker oily smoke. Other than valve seals and oil rings – does anyone have a suggestion why the Buick 215 would have excessive oil burn?
If oil is showing up equally on all the plugs then it's very likely you have a pvc valve issue ,or if it auto Trans then your sucking oil in from modulator may be . Disconnect both vacuum lines to check , but the report of the noise issue now leads me to a mechanical motor issue I am sorry to say!
There is no modulator on the 2 speed dyna junk tranny's these came with. I have personally never heard of anyone having such an issue after a rebuilding a 215. You might try calling Mark @ D&D to see if he can shed some light on your problem possibly, as he is the "215 guru". Keith
On the later Buick engines, the PCV valve plugs in to the back of the intake manifold. If you don't use the proper intake gasket/valley pan, the PCV suction siphons oil out of the valley and burns it in the engine. That usually doesn't produce any smoke, just uses oil. I would do a compression and leak down test on the engine. Might be a ring problem. That goes right back to the rebuilder.
If compression and leak down tested good, it may be an overlapped oil control ring (the middle ring that is wavy). I've seen that before, the installer didn't butt the ring ends up together, had one locked into itself. If that's the case, compression and leakdown still test fine because the upper two rings still seal.
Why post in the Nailhead section? They sent it out smoking? I'm not favorably impressed. This shop owes you diagnostics. I'm not sure you want them to do it, though. I'm not sure they're competent. PCV is my first guess. Bad valve guides, broken or upside-down rings, excess piston-to-bore clearance, excess oil flung off the rod bearings, intake manifold not sealing on the bottom of the port(s), worn piston ring grooves, out-of-round or tapered cylinders. (Was the engine bored? Honed with a torque plate? New pistons?) What sort of valve stem seals does your 215 use? What do the plugs look like? What is the cranking compression on all eight? What is the cylinder leakage on a leakdown tester? (Needs to be compared to a known-good engine of similar bore size using the same leakdown tester.)
