hi guys, first time posting here as I actually own an e21 not e30 but since it's still on an m20 engine there should be quite a few of you here experienced in these engines.
Basically after purchasing the car without history apart from knowing that it had not been run in 15 years, I decided to do a full engine rebuild of the m20b23 engine including:
honing the block
new goetze piston rings on 5 of the pistons and 1 piston completely replaced with a new one which came complete with rings installed (TRW) due to me being stupid and cracking the edge of the original piston...
polished the crank and installed new big and main end bearings
new seals throught and new head bolts etc.
cylinder head reconditioned by skimming the head and installing new valve stem seals but not the valve guides (stupid I know but somehow missed this out as was my first engine rebuild)
swapped over the k jetronic for Motronic 1.3 off a 2.0 and after initially starting up and having problems with heavily retarded timing due to having 2.0 fuel injection and a 2.3 crank and pistons, decided to swap the ignition over to the original distributor and got the engine to work seemingly flawlessly and pulling nicely through the whole rpm range...
Now after getting it installed back in the car and trying out the engine for the last 100 miles or so I'm having problems with lots of white / bluish smoke from the engine indicating that it is burning oil.
cut a long story short, I opened the engine up and measured and rechecked everything and found that:
the exhaust valve guides are quite worn and are getting replaced,
the piston to bore clearance is 0.102mm (0.004") gap which seems reasonable enough considering the pistons themselves are worn 0.07mm
the only things worrying me are the gap below and above the compression ring of 0.279mm (just checked with instructions on the packaging or the goezte rings I purchased and they mentioned a max of 0.13mm )
and the ring gap between edges:
top side of cyl bore: 0.559
bottom side of cyl bore: 0.61mm
is this really bad? what could the consequences be? and could this possibly be the cause of excessive smoke apart from the valve guides which are getting replaced? and should I replace the pistons or possibly find rings that are better fitting?
do any of you have details on what clearances are allowed in the m20 engine?
Loads of smoke after m20b23 engine rebuild
Moderator: martauto
honing was done properly at a machine shop and smoke was present even at idling but after a few secs of idling then hard acceleration there would be clouds of white/bluish smoke.
also not sure if I mentioned this, but piston 4 was replaced upon the initial rebuild just to be safe due to the bent connecting rod and that piston/ bore was the only one clean without any oil present upon opening up the engine this time, so it seems to indicate the problem mostly lies within the piston/rings clearance? or maybe just my luck lol
also not sure if I mentioned this, but piston 4 was replaced upon the initial rebuild just to be safe due to the bent connecting rod and that piston/ bore was the only one clean without any oil present upon opening up the engine this time, so it seems to indicate the problem mostly lies within the piston/rings clearance? or maybe just my luck lol

