SO ive had alot of people scratching their heads on this one so lets see if someone can give me an answer i haven't already tried. EF xr6 complete rebuild- Pistons (hi-comp) and rings, balanced bottom end, Head shaved 30 thou and AU gasket, head port, crow double valve springs, new stem seals, valve regrind, hi volume oil pump. My baby has done about 11,000kms now and wont stop burning oil. I thought maybe because i used moly rings it might take awhile to bed in but no good. I have checked the compression about 4 times over the run in time and it keeps increasing every time i check, last test i got about 250PSI avg per cylinder (hot) which is about 50psi above a stock BA motor so the comp is good. The pcv is new and works fine, after about 6k i borrowed my uncles trailer with about 1ton in it and drove it up the longest steepest hill i could find in the highest gear possible (5 speed) for about 1 1/2 hrs which improved the performance quite a bit especially on LPG.
Since then i have installed a makeshift catchcan which consists of me joining the pcv and breather together into a 1.25ltr bottle to check if oil is going through my intake but no oil in the bottle after about 500kms. She doesn't burn oil on start up hot or cold or when i rev the living s**t out of it while stopped, seems to let out a puff on take off and sometimes when im changing gears which led me to believe it could be stem seals sucking in the oil on full vac which may may have been contributed by the oil pump flooding the head but ive had my uncle have a look at it and he doesn't believe that the head is being flooded, he looked in the filler cap under high revs and it didn't appear to be flooding.
I ran the motor in on Nulon 15/40 straight mineral which went up in smoke, i used about 1ltr for every 1000kms and moreys didn't seem to slow it down much. I'm at a loss and don't want to pull the donk down again to find no problems and find it was a simple fix 1st.
Note i rebuilt the motor myself as my 1st rebuild using genuine ford manuals and i don't believe from memory that i overlapped the oil scraper spring by accident, if it did i would've thought it would've burnt oil all the time especially screaming its ringer out while stationary but anyway i know its a long winded story but i spent alot of money on my baby and want it 2 run like a dream as most of you would imagine.

Cheers any valuable input would be greatly appreciated

Joel

you have not run it in correctly and glazed the bores. so while you get good comp on the comp rings, the oil rings were not bedded in and are allowing blowby essentially. Easy answer, strip down, rehone the bores and rebuild..

Did you use a running oil or only the nulon mineral? Bulon moneral still has friction modifiers in it, thats the entire idea behind a run in oil, no modifiers.

You could run the gauntlet at try a run in oil in it now, but i would think the damage has already been done.

You may want to get your hands on some Penrite running in oil, its a 15w-40, can be found most places. Any DECENT auto shop will have a run in oil in stock.

My personal choice is Brad Penn oil, hard to find though, but to to expensive either and they do a run in oil. I hope its not to late to save your motor without a rebuild though.

I did a similar rebuild to that in my EL XR6, I used the Penrite Run-in Oil for maybe 200k then switched to 10-40 until 5000k then to Penrite HPR 15-60, and seems not to be burning any oil. I just drove it firmly, didnt baby it at all and no labouring the engine. My money would be on glazed bores too, what was your run in technique?

Used the penrite in mine as well. Sort of neglected to buy it till it was needed, but it is a very important item if you want it run in properly.

basically i started the donk 4 30 sec and shut down 2 check 4 leaks and then ran it up and down a steep winding road with 2 mates in the car 4 a bit of extra weight. I also sprayed the bores down with wd-40 and coated the rings with oil. Ive been told that the wd-40 is good to use to run in a engine. Im still skeptical on the bores just because of the circumstances of when it actually blows smoke. I didnt take it over 4g until about 2k in on the run in but afta that i gave it hell dont baby it at all. Ive been told that the moly rings sometimes wont completely bed in till about 10k. Im at a loss and the whole job cost me about 5k with me building it so thats why im looking down other ave's before pulling it out again.

Did you check or have the bores checked for round? Did you get it bored out but not fit oversize pistons? Did you hone the bores? Did you do it right??

Hopefully you took the block to a shop and had them check the deck, bores and crank tunnel for true and got the bores honed?

all machining done by engine shop, they ordered the new slugs. Block had a full service. I spared no expence the only serviceable part not replaced on the engine was the belt tensioner. The machining was a1 that wont b the issue. I also double checked all the ring gaps which were fine.

Are the plugs looking sooty and/or damp - any look a bit different to the others - particularly No.1...

it'll be one of two problems, incorrect installation of the rings OR a running in problem, be the oil used or the way it was treated before it was driven, or the way it was driven.

The only way you are going to fix it is be stripping it down find the problem and fixing it.

The molly compression rings won't have anything to do with it. it would have still had conventional oil rings.