Lude Generation

Hi folks,

I've got a bit of photographic forensic work for you guys As I've mentioned before (I think) my Civic is a bit thirsty on the oil front. There's no obvious oil leaks, but the engine is old/high mileage so of course it's covered in oily grime making tracing a current leak a difficult. So I decided to start at the easiest/cheapest solution an replace the valve cover gasket. I pulled the cover off and took the below photos, does it look like the gasket was leaking?? There's a lot of oil on the mating surface and in places it looks like it has seeped out the sides, but is this normal or does it look like this could be where my oil has been going?

I think its normal, not 100%

well wouldn't hurt to fit new gasket & have it torqued down correctly anyway

Yup that is normal. Remember to use a sealer when putting the cover back on and leave it for as long as possible before driving it.

Whack a new gasket on there. But from what we are seing now, these engines are not doing very well at high miles. All the ones we see at high mileage are burning oil like mad. We even see cars come in with vtec fault codes due to low oil level. So i would agree with these guys, seems normal

Yeah, I'm under the impression mine is burning the oil I had a new valve cover gasket so I lumped that on. I'm going to have to rebuild the engine ultimately though I think. Apparently the D16V1 is fairly notorious for the valve stem seals failing?

I cant honestly say why they burn oil All i know is that even the cars with full service history with high mileage are burning a load of oil. We have never been asked to repair one for this fault. But its either got to be that or worn piston rings/bores

That'll give me something to do come summer then luckily my mate's cousin runs a motor engineering workshop so once I strip the engine I can take it down to him to have it skimmed/honed/bored or whatever needs doing. That just leaves me needing to sort a 'courtesy' car for Laura - she won't drive the Golf so I guess I best sort out a Prelude for her or something

Cool. Well when you do the work and if you find anything let us know. I would like to know the problem.

Will do I need to do a compression test first really though, got the tool in the garage just can't be arsed to do it at least then I can try and determine wether I'm dealing with the valve stem seals or piston rings. If it's coming apart though it's probably prudent to do everything. It'll cost a bit more, but if it does another 170,000 miles on the rebuilt motor then it'll be worth it in the long run