Piston rings?

R

Robin_Cox

Member
AUA engine, 178,000 miles and change. Noticed that a couple of the plugs had a drip of oil clinging onto them last week when I was changing them and the ignition cables. Consensus seems to be to check compression and that it is probably piston rings. Engine running fine, no obvious smoke and it doesn't seem to be burning through oil (at least, since the very leaky pressure switch was replaced!). Is this something that could be done with the engine in the car, or is it a proper engine out / strip down job?
 
I'm afraid it's an engine out job, only way to access the rings is to remove pistons from the conrods. Whatever you do don't undo the main caps (Crank to block) as the engine will be scrap.

Make sure you order the updated Audi rings. They recognised the problem and rectified oil consumption by updating the rings.
 
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You could do the job with the engine in but you'll need an engine support bar. Remove the cylinder head after removing the engine support (hence the support bar), remove the sump, remove the big ends and push the pistons & con-rods up through the block. Sounds simple at least! I can't see any advantage in removing the engine.

RAB
 
Is there room underneath the engine to take the sump of insitu? If there is in that case you could leave it on there. I'd be careful though, pressure wash the engine bay get it very clean before attempting open heart surgery in what is a dirty environment.?
 
Hi there, I'm a bit puzzled.
You wrote "drip of oil clinging onto the sparks plug", " engine runs fine", "no obvious smoke", "doesn't seem to be burning through oil ". So you have no loss of oil and you think your pistons rings are gone?
I have oil on my sparks plugs but it's coming from the tappets cover, oil sipping into the plugs wells. It runs on the plugs when I take them off.
Not sure if it is relevant but I thought it may help.
Cheers
 
This is the precise reason I thought it made sense to post. A lot of online sources suggest that the plugs having oil on them indicates worn piston rings - and I have no doubt that this *could* be a problem given the mileage and general condition of the car elsewhere. However, there isn't smoke, and the oil level seems pretty constant. Lifting the plugs out, the oil that was on the electrodes wasn't burnt on in the way that I would anticipate if it was constantly oily inside the combustion chamber in those two cylinders over a long period of time - it was more reminiscent of what you would get if you dunk a piece of ciabatta into something like a dish of fresh dipping oil - ie, if there was oil sitting at the bottom of the hole that the spark plug is located within that then coated the plug as it was being unscrewed and pulled out. The plugs also look near identical - not obviously dirtier burn in one cylinder than another.

I'm going to avoid panicking for now and see how things look in a couple of months when my indy has to do the MOT. Fingers crossed - thanks again for the comments and advice.
 
I have 50 000 more than you and the only oil I have is on the outside of the plugs.
In a couple of weeks, pull the sparks cords one by one and check if they have oil on them. Then check with a torch the wells of the spark plugs, before removing the plugs.
I have done that 2 weeks ago and cleaned the oil after removing the spark plugs. And I'll check again.
 
my old 1.4 petrol had quite a bad oil leak from the rocker cover? on cylinder number 2 and when it started to misfire I would remove the plug cap and syringe the oil out before removing the plug and cleaning the bore with thinners on a rag. It appears to be a common problem on this engine from what I have read on here.... I very much doubt its the piston rings!...
 
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