7A-FE burning oil; replace piston ring?

That really depends on how much $ and time you are willing to invest to keep it in tip-top shape. I would also, while having it apart, have the cylinder head looked at and at the very least replace the valve stem seals.

Jose

I will be most likely using the car for another two years or so, or maybe until the engine truly conks out. So if the cylinder head for the 7A-FE one of the culprits to the oil burning, should I just get a different head from a 4A or would that be too far? I've been a bit interested in creating a 7A-GE.

I just had my head overhauled on my 94 Corolla. The valve stem seals were replaced & the head completely gone through. While the head was off it only made sense to replace the rings & bearings too. She runs perfect now with no oil usage in the first 5k miles. :thumbsup:

How much did the parts and labor cost?

Corolla Atlantic said:

How much did the parts and labor cost?

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I had all the work done for $2k + tax. It also included a new exhaust manifold that was cracked. It was worth it to me. I didn't have the time to do all of the work & needed the car running quicker then I could have done it myself.

After playing with some numbers I knew that by spending this money the engine would be good for many years to come. Getting a different used car could have a whole new set of issues so this was an easy decision. :thumbsup:

I will be doing the same thing Supercharged did very soon. (Hmm I thought I would be doing this months ago!)

On the head, valve stem seals are hard as a rock and dont seal well after maybe 100k miles. Some of them get hard enough to break off. This sort of problem shows itself when you immerse the guy behind you in traffic as you leave a traffic light.

Rings seem to be the BIG problem for oil consumption. My car has a castrol drinking problem I expect to remedy with some freshening up. I will post a detailed story about what I find when I open it up.

-SP

Usually when a 4A or 7A is consuming alot of oil, it's a mixture of old leaky valve stem seals and gummed up oil control rings on the pistons that cause 99% of it. Running synthetic oil from Day 1 would prevent this but they didn't exactly have that back in the 90's lol

t.mcginley.jr said:

Usually when a 4A or 7A is consuming alot of oil, it's a mixture of old leaky valve stem seals and gummed up oil control rings on the pistons that cause 99% of it. Running synthetic oil from Day 1 would prevent this but they didn't exactly have that back in the 90's lol

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Exactly what was wrong with mine. The oil rings were shot & weren't sealing at all. It just made sense to replace them all & all the rod bearings too at that point. I broke in the new rings with dino oil & changed the oil at 1k, 3k, & 5k miles after the rebuild & then switched to Mobil 1.