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.
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.