Festiva 1.3L blowing oil

Ranger_gone_straight

Well-known member
It isnt a 6 and just barely a 4, but its an inline.... Anyway I am just finishing up putting a Mazda 1.6L in to replace the 1.3L (direct bolt in, no adapting). The 1.3L however had good compression and enough pep, but it was pushing oil out the valve cover breather vent. I literally had oil running out the air intake snorkle of the air cleaner (carburetor model). Noticed when car started smoking and lost power. Air filter was oil soaked of course.

Replaced pcv valve several times to no effect. Finally ran hose from the air vent on the valve cover to a bottle rather than air filter housing. Worked for little while, stopped the smoking, just had to empty the bottle about every gasoline fill up. Finally hose blew out of the bottle on one trip and I had oil all over everything under the hood.

People on Festiva board gave wonderful advice that "some of them just do this". Well, WHY? Nobody knows, some of these engines can go 300k to 400k without a rebuild and no problem. Others push oil like this even before 100k. Its not a worn out engine and this isnt blowby like on a high mile car. Engine only has like 134k which isnt that much for these engines.

I found cheap low mile 1.6L and swapped. That feedback carburetor and its bushel basket of vacuum tubing and little gizmos also was needing work (nightmare to work on), so with engine out, easy to make adapter plates and put in a an old aftermarket non-pollution Weber carb I had saved off an old VW I used to own. Festivas were nice in that despite them being computerized they had distributor with mechanical and vacuum advance so it works fine with non-feedback carb.

I suspect the 1.6L will outlast the car, and I'll probably never have use for the 1.3L ever again, but would love to figure this out if anybody has some clever ideas. The only other time I've seen a non worn out engine pushing oil to this extent was on an ancient high mile OHV Volvo engine. However it had worn off couple cam lobes (known for soft factory cams) so when I replaced cam, the pcv system started working properly again.
 
The force that is pushing the oil out the valve cover is compression. Bet the car didn't do it since mile number 1.
There is simply more air pressure in the crankcase than outside it so there goes the oil. If you could have vented the crankcaseup high on the block and on the downhill side of the crank you might get more air and less oil.
But the bottom line is that something in that engine is worn.
Take it apart, It will either be very easy to see or you won't see it with your eyes.
 
Yea, I figured broken ring or something. One of these days I'll take it up to car wash for a bath, then disassemble it to satisfy my own curiosity. Internal parts for these engines are high dollar so they rarely get rebuilt. But never know might find some closeout deal. These econoboxes really get abused by people who just consider them throw away and dont do proper maintenance.

I just wondered cause I bought the car with like 100k on it and no oil problem, then around 130k, it started blowing oil horrible.

Finally got enough stuff hooked up and started the 1.6L today. That is really a nice smooth clean low mile engine. And boy the Weber carb is a big improvement. I remember really liking it on the old VW and think I'm going to like it on the Festiva.
 
That should be fun with a 1.6. A Napa I delivered parts for had one with a 5 speed. I could get it to break the tires loose in 3rd gear. With a fresh 1-2" of snow you can get it to 4 wheel drift in small turns if you turn in and give it extra gas. Fun little crate on wheels.
 
Few years ago, I had a Geo/Chev Metro put out by Suziki which had the 1.0 Liter 3 Cyl Inline. It did the same thing. Come to find out after a lot of searching that the replacement headgaskets did not match the original head gaskets in that the oil drainback holes did not quite line up and that the entire upper head area was filling up with oil and then would go into the aircleaner housing and do the same as what you are looking at.

Fred
 
I had a baffle work loose inside the valve cover that was under the hole for the PCV vent hose that went to the air cleaner on a Chrysler 2.2. Ran good but oil would saturate the air filter.
regards
rikard
 
Ranger_gone_straight, please update us on how you went with this.

I've just done a 1600 16valve B6 engine in my friends Mazda, and it is awesome!

I've followed everything else you've done, especially the In line 300 in your Ranger..
 
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