Phillips Kevin wrote:
>
> On checking the oil I found a water droplet on the dipstick..
<snip>
> It was been
> very wet and cold of late and the car is parked outside all day after a short
>4
> mile trip to work. The symptoms have only started since the really cold damp
> weather set in - coincidence ?
I'd say you need a longer commute. Only 4 miles of driving wouldn't give
enough time for the oil to properly warm which would burn off
condensation and gas blow-by. So far, I don't see a real problem with
the car.
I would recommend a compression check to see if all the cyclinders are
even or at least within 15%. The easiest way to get water in the oil is
a blown head gasket so a compression check might reveal this. If your
compression is uniformly low, say under 90 pounds on a hot engine, this
is probably tired rings. Squirt a little oil in each cylinder and
retest. If compression goes up, definitley tired rings.
If compression is lower only in the front cylinder, you may have gummed
up rings in that cylinder typically caused by it being too close to the
water pump and runs too cool. You can try several sessions of spraying a
'top end lubricant' through the spark plug hole to see if the rings will
loosen -- but I haven't had a lot of luck with that. "Top end lubricant"
can be anything from Marvel Mystery Oil to 3-in-one oil to to WD-40 to
Liquid Wrench to carb cleaner (in order of least contamination of engine
oil) -- the goal is to loosen the rings grip on the piston.
If two adjacent cylinders have equally low compression, that would
likely be a blown head gasket. If compression doesn't temporarily
improve after squirting oil in the spark plug hole, that would be worn
valves.
You said it burns oil and smokes a bit. How often do you have to add
oil? On the list of stupid things I've done, I was confounded with a
previous car that smoked but I didn't ever need to add much oil. At the
time I was messing with the carberation and dashpot oil. And I was
overfilling the dashpots which would leak oil into the manifold and make
the motor smoke a lot! So make sure carb dashpots have the correct
amount of oil.
To create more heat on your short commute, I'd use a hotter thermostat
and, if you have an oil cooler, I would cover it. I haven't had much
luck with covering portions of the radiator. The LBC tends to overheat
quickly.
I'd also recommend getting a second opinion!
Bob Allen, Kansas City, '69MGC/GT
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