Hi guys,

I've got a 2002 Polo 9n 1.2 (AZQ) and its burning oil. It had the cylinder head rebuilt in 2011 but I'm now starting to think they may have done a half ass'd job of it. Is it possible for the head gasket to blow and only cause the symptom of burning oil? Everywhere I've read it always says about oil and coolant mixing and so on, and that confirms a blown head gasket. Is that the case?

Its been compression tested and that was fine so it wont be the piston rings.

PCV Valve has been changed as we thought it may be sucking oil from the sump into the air intake.

If anyone has any information to help that would be great, I don't have enough money to fix any major problems.

Cheers Guys!

Glad to hear that it has good compression.

When an engine is low on compression, it is quite possible for it to pump oil past the pistons, as there is little or no compression above them to keep the oil where it belongs.

How do you drive the car??? If it is used only for 'shopping trips', you may have simply got glazed cylinder bores, which a good hard drive down the motorway may well put right.

You can get a good idea of how the oil is getting into the cylinders by looking for BLUE exhaust smoke - If it is present when the engine has been idling (say at the traffic lights) it is probably finding its way between the valve stems and the valve guides.

If there is a trail of blue smoke when you are pulling really hard (in too high a gear) uphill, it is most likely getting past the pistons.

It is possible to have good compression and still get oil past the pistons, this can happen with glazed bores, as mentioned above, or it can be that the compression rings are OK, but the oil control rings are not earning their keep.

When cylinder heads are 'rebuilt', there is more to it than simply fitting new valve stem oil seals, as if either the valve guides or the valve stems are badly worn, new seals will give only a temporary 'cure', what is required in that case would be new guides and/or valves.

An old trick when working on the cylinder head is NOT to clean all of the hard carbon from the piston crowns, but to leave a ring of it round the edge of the pistons, likewise, DON'T clean the carbon ring from the top of the bores. This carbon does in fact help to keep the oil 'below', if it is removed, oil can (I don't say will) find its way into the cylinders, this tends then to form a 'soft' layer of carbon, which doesn't have the same effect of keeping the oil 'down' as the hard carbon did.

Regards.

I use this car for small trips but I also use it on the motorway once a week, usually just sit at about 70-80mph majority of the way.

As for the smoke its just white, people have mentioned they can smell the oil in it as well. You can't notice the smoke when driving about but when I put it in my garage that's when I noticed it. I thought it may have been the head gasket because there's a small amount of oil on the right hand side of the cylinder head, I also read that if your head gasket has gone it can cause the car to make a whistling noise and my car does make a whistling noise at about 2000RPM.

I'm tempted to take the head off and have a look but as I've never done it before I'm a bit hesitant.

Thanks again.