I've been trying to diagnose an oil burning issue at startup for a week now. 05 E-350 5.4 2V
I'm somewhat familiar with a method that involves revving the vehicle at about 1500 in neutral with the parking brake on a steep downhill slope (so oil sits on the seals) for a couple minutes to find failures, and I have a couple questions...
1. Is there anyone who has some experience using this method for detecting valve seal fails who could explain it a little better to me?
2. Does this only work on straight fours or also on V 8's? I feel like if I did this test the oil would shift to cylinders 1,2,6 and 5 and not show leaks on the upper four. (Or do you do it on a downhill and uphill to test both?)
3. Is there a better method of detecting bad valve seals?
Once again, the truck only burns oil after it's been sitting and oil has made it's way into the cylinders. Smoke goes away at about 15 seconds and doesn't return.
I would do a cylinder compression test but accessing the front cylinders of the engine from the doghouse is an incredible pain in the ass.
Thanks as usual
-7.3
How much oil are you burning? How many miles on the engine?
I would love to hear from anybody who has tried/used the slope method, it sounds fascinating.
But - if you're not parking your truck upside down, the only place the oil you're burning immediately on startup can be coming from is through the valve seals. Oil does not crawl up from the crankcase past your piston rings while the truck is parked. If your rings are bad, you will get smoke until your catalytic converter gets hot enough to burn the oil.
Thanks a lot for the advice.
I have a video of it starting after sitting about 12 hours. You can see the plume of smoke, then the condensation and oil afterwards. When it's warmer outside but the engine has been sitting longer the white smoke is non existent and the blue smoke can be pretty bad for about 20 seconds. But i haven't seen anything after 20-30 seconds. This isn't the best video since it shows condensation instead of oil burning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92mXFHeHPbA
How much oil are you burning? How many miles on the engine? Are you adding coolant? If you want to know what's coming out of a tailpipe, check what's being added to the engine other than gasoline.
@Glen_stret sorry, got a little distracted there. Haven't burned too much - problem has only existed a few days. 220K miles on the 5.4. Coolant is fine and i've never had any head gasketey issues such as overheating or burning coolant.
After 220K, it is not in the least unusual to have some oil leaking past the valve guides, but if you're not burning a lot of oil (more than a quart per thousand miles) you could probably put off doing anything to the valve seals. But before I'd do any substantial work on the engine, I'd do a wet/dry compression check. You don't want to go doing a pretty expensive valve guide replacement unless you know that the rings and valves are in decent shape.