Hey everyone, I am new to this forum. I have a 99 SI with 108k miles on it. I have owned it since 73k miles. I started to notice that it was burning oil around 90k miles and it got so bad that it was about a quart for every tank of gas. I took it to a garage and they did a compression check and said that all cylinders are within spec, and that I needed a valve job. At the end of the day, they got me with over $3k in repairs. They showed me one of the old exhaust valves and there was a cut burnt through it, so it looked pretty bad. They also machined the head and replaced the head gasket. I got the car back last week and it started misfiring again and I took it back to the same garage, they replaced another valve. Long story short, my car is starting to misfire again and it is also burning oil really bad as well. What could be causing the valves to keep burning up? I checked the spark plugs and they are the correct heat range, and I have no overheating problems. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

If it's getting that hot in there, I'm wondering if you maybe have a fuel issue making it run lean.

What did they do for $3k? That seems really, really high for head work on a street motor.

 

I pulled 4 codes from the code reader:
P0108 - manifold pressure
P0420 - catalyst system
P1399 - any cylinder misfire
P0133 - 02 sensor

The work they did at the garage was:
1. New head gasket/machine head/valve job (receipt doesn't specify if they did all of the valves or not)
2. New belts
3. New water pump
4. New timing belt
5. New A/C kit
6. New engine mounts
7. New idler puller
8. New spark plugs

 

Valves that are adjusted too tight will burn up, they also lose compression and there is misfire. The burning of oil though is almost certainly due to bad piston rings. The oil control rings fail(*) and oil gets into the cylinders even though the compression may be good. This garage either doesn't know what they are doing, or they are ripping you off, or a combination of both.

(*) At low miles, it's probably sludge due to not changing the oil often enough.

 

Thanks for the insight, I am actually posting this for my little brother and I originally suggested that it was the rings also, because you can even see little specks of oil on the rear bumper and license plate after you drive down the interstate for a while. I do believe that they ripped him off also, I guess we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

 

How many miles on your engine? You could have wore rings.

 

How many miles on your 1999 civic?

 

only 108K