Well I went to see the Golf today. It started right up, but after a few minutes, started pushing oil out of the top of the dipstick. When i took off the oil fill cap it was like a smokey blow dryer. Mechanic said he blew out the ventilation hoses. He said that it was not normal for a diesel to be building up pressure there, that it must be the rings. I mentioned the valve guides to him, and he said it wouldn't hurt to do those also when the head was off, but that wouldn't cause the problem. Any input?
I am reading your previous posts here and it looks like you had a serious overheating problem. It is likely that you have done some ring/bore damage if it was extremely hot for a period of time. I believe that the rings will lose their spring like nature so will not grip the bore as tightly as before. The bores may be seriously glazed with cooked oil as well as the piston ring lands gummed with cooked oil. I think that you have a mess on your hands. Trust your mechanic to help you through this one.
The only other possibility that goes through my mind is seriously gummed and coked ring lands that have gripped the rings not allowing them to expand fully. The overheating may have caused this. I haven't found a chemical yet that would free that material from the lands so you are still looking at pulling the piston assemblies to scrape out the crud from the lands. If you did overheat the motor a head gasket replacement will not be far off as that tends to precipitate failure. As I said before give it to your mechanic to fix. Pay the shot and tell yourself to never drive another motor when too hot.
Thanks you are probably right and it is line at his shop right now. I'm getting rings, a head gasket, and some other gasket he mentioned. I really didn't think I ran it that hot but I'm not sure how sensitive the engine is to overheating. It did hit red a few times but not for too long. I was stranded in the middle of nowhere and kept running it for a few minutes till it got hot then coasting and pulling over till it cooled off some. Looking back I should have parked it and hitched hiked. Now I just have to hope that I didn't hurt the cylinders :shock:
What is the age of the car? The reason I ask is that with that low a mileage is it possible that it has had a replacement motor at some time in the past? Do you think that the instrument cluster has been changed out or the vehicle run with the speedometer disconnected? A low mileage motor could be seriously coked with short hop driving and a motor that never got warmed up all that much. Conversely a high mileage motor could simply be beat. You won't know until you get inside. I seriously doubt that the bores are damaged on an engine with that few miles if that is the case.
i'm pretty confident in the miles. the car sat for almost 7 years, and i have maint records in the glovebox. The car has an honest 112,000 miles or so on it right now. I have been slowly replacing things that dryrotted, hoses, belts, tires, etc. I got the car because the former owner couldn't get it running after it sat so long. It is an 86 Golf 4 door and the body is in great shape for its age, southern car
My most recent driver, an 87 Golf TD, had sat for close to 10 years. The same deal as yours without the the overheating, it had a severe case of blowby. The ring lands were heavily gummed and coked. It got new rings as a matter of course but when I pulled the piston assemblies it took several days of scraping, alternately soaking in carburetor cleaner, to free the crud. I believe that the rings were not working properly because of all the interfering coke. Maybe it is due to poorer oils of past or maybe just a reaction of time and old oil?
