General Oil Burning / smoke

[ottiian]

I've noticed within the past few months that my mk1 panda / marbella is generating very large quantities of blue smoke when cold, and some when warm. And it's guzzling oil (say a litre every 250miles).

When I bought it, 6 months ago, it had a brand new 12 month MOT, so it couldn't have been doing it to such an extent then (unless they did the emissions test with no oil!)

I did a service and only one spark plug was foulled with oil, cylinder 1, the others being perfect light brown but one with a split electrode (probably overheated hence headgasket next).

Also, I replaced the head gasket. (after oil/water vica-versa, cream under filler cap).
Now the thing is, I haven't touched the cylinder bolts since replacing the h/gasket.
Do they need retightening after so many miles (must be over 1000 now), could it be causing low compression and sucking up oil past the rings?

A funny thing is, I took off the lead to cylinder one, the foulled plug one, and still there was lots of blue smoke.

The car has the old 903cc non-fire pushrod engine, with 88,000 miles which I think should be genuine, as the condition of the car is very good.

any advice? I've considered the possibility of worn valve seals, but surely they wouldn't produce so much smoke and cause so much oil consumption?

 

[ottiian]

Forgot to say, the car has engine management with a cat.
So it cannot have been burning oil before the last mot as it would have been ruined and failed on emissions regardless.

 

[dave]

sounds like rings to me, unless the headgasket wasn't done proper, did you get the head skimed, did you tightern the bolts in the order shown in the manual. when you cleaned the top of the block did any s**t go down the cylinder.

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