Ford 1600 Petrol Breathing Problems

[frodo]

My Watermota petrol engine breathes fumes, not smoke, from the oil filler at 2000rpm+. How do i find out if they are coming via the piston rings or from the head. The engine starts, runs fine and does not use much oil. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[spannerman]

If it starts and runs well I would imagine the head is OK, when you say fumes do you mean that there is a definite pressure from the oil filler which indicates piston blowby, have you tried seeing if there is pressure out of the dipstick tube as here you should feel more pressure as its a smaller opening.
If its a definite pulse from either of these places its sounds like its the compression rings on one or more cylinders, these rings are solid so if worn or stuck will leak pressure, whereas the oil ring (s) have holes in them which allow them to remove the oil from the cylinder wall, (and will let gas blowby) so they may well be working normally hence low oil consumption.
If its a steady breeze then its general wear on the whole engine so will need new rings on all cylinders, or maybe a rebore.
A compression test won't tell you if its head or rings, but you can remove the injectors and put some diesel in each cylinder and monitor to see if it dissappears more quickly in one particular cylinder first.

 

[aztec]

agree, rings stuck.. or if overevved.. broken.

these engines are easy ro recondition, if you do all the dissassembly work, just drop the bits into the machine shop and they'll do the rest.

got a couple of these in my boat, but i'm re-engining with diesels.. may be worth considering going for an XLD 416/418 as fitted to fiesta/escort diesels. the conversion should be fairly straightforward, lancing do the bolt on marinisation kit.

good luck.

 

[VicS]

[ QUOTE ]
these engines are easy ro recondition

[/ QUOTE ] It may be a lot less work to impovise some sort of arrangement to conduct these fumes to the air intake. Go to the engine side of the filter if it has a paper type air filter otherwise the filter becomes saturated with oil which then restricts the air flow.

A compression test should tell tou if there is really any need for the major engine reconditioning.

 

[Norman_E]

Most petrol engines have a crankcase breather which is connected to a flexible pipe to feed the fumes back into the engine. If this is blocked it will explain fumes from the oil filler. Excessive fumes do indicate stuck, worn or broken rings, but a blocked breather should be investigated first, and a check on each cylinder made with a compression tester, before stripping down the engine

 

[pappaecho]

the XLD 416/418 are diesel engines. The 1600 Watermota is petrol and is probably a Ford 113 engine similar to that fitted to Mark1/2 Cortinas, thankfully before the crossflow engine. before you get too worried, have you checked the engine breather? PM me if you are not sure where it is

 

[Honey]

The Mark 1/2 Cortina engine was designed to run on leaded fuel! It suffered when used with LRP and should not be run all the time on Unleaded unless modifyed!

 

[Phoenix of Hamble]

Common problem with petrol engines....

Before the days of finely computer controlled engines, the common fix, as suggested above was to recirculate...

Another solution is an oil trap.... a simple chamber that the fumes vent into, to allow vapour to settle before another exit to the outside world.... very common on higher powered or stressed engines as an aftermarket... and also avoided oily vapour being spread all over the inside of the engine compartment.... see any handbook for the V8 rover engine.... was almost an essential on those!

PS comments above above leaded vs unleaded.... specific change required is usually harder valve seats in the heads to stop them wearing away (the lead in the leaded petrol helped to lubricate and avoid the wear)