A friend of mine has a 1.8l 94 that has a ring problem (we suspect) and burns quite a bit of oil. We were thinking about trying seafoam on it to see if that loosens up/helps out the lowest ring on the piston which is supposedly the one that gets gunked up and causes the issue, according to miata.net.
Has anyone ever use seafoam for something like this, or is there something else someone would recommend?
The oil control ring is indeed the bottom ring (it's really a stack of hardware and not a single ring like the compression rings) on pretty much any piston, this one included.
What's the method of planned application, how are you going to get the Seafoam to the right place? I would think pouring some down each spark plug hole and bumping the crankshaft back and forth a bit would probably work some into the oil control ring stack, is there another method described on miata.net?
I say it's worth a shot since a can of the stuff is a lot cheaper than a rebuild, but I don't know if I would expect miracles.
That's what we were planning on doing... Dumping some down each plug hole, then rotating the crank a bit every half hour or so for an evening. If it seemed to make a difference we'd lather, rinse and then repeat.
I've done something similar on a Saturn with success. It was burning oil at 1qt/1000 miles and went down to 1qt/4000 miles after the treatment. It's a common issue with Saturns.
I used Mopar Combustion Chamber Cleaner and put Mobil1 synthetic down the spark plug holes. This is the GM TSB procedure except with their own Combustion Chamber Cleaner.
I've heard of it working. If the rings are stuck due to carbon, you might be successfull. If they are broken, nothing will be improved.
$10 and no harm done if it doesn't work.
foxtrapper wrote:I've heard of it working. If the rings are stuck due to carbon, you might be successfull. If they are broken, nothing will be improved.
$10 and no harm done if it doesn't work.
That's what we're hoping, thanks for the insite.. .
It's very interesting that's a GM TSB, Blueside up.
I'll post here how it worked in a few weeks when he gets around to it.
