If there was an option for surveys on this forum we could have one for BB351 burning oil or not. It would be interesting if in addition to this we put in our kit's number then we could see what percentage is burning oil and know if a certain range of numbers is a problem. I have been watching my oil level and I haven't seen it drop at all since installing a new alternator cover gasket that had been leaking and I have around 1000 miles on my kit. And no smoke from my 351 that I can detect. I wonder if there are any consistent factors across these oil burning 351 engines besides the BB kit? Maybe someone with more engine experience can suggest a list of possible causal factors and we can start a running tabulation comparing good and bad BB351 engines and see if anything correlates? I volunteer to set something up, maybe a spreadsheet on google docs, but need better engine peeps to give me reasons a new BB351 engine kit would destroy it's piston quickly. As a test of sheet access people interested in this project can try to open this spreadsheet, make a change like add your name, then once we get a list of possible causes we can start filling it with data from each 351 owner and see if any good info pops out.

 

I think I go in the reason for all the recent smoking 351s. I pulled mine apart and changed the head gasket. That did nothing. I pulled it apart again and found that I could nearly throw the oil rings through the cylinder. Plain and simple. Case closed. He shipped the wrong rings.

 

Could you elaborate? Was the end gap incorrect? What about the piston.

 

I've had not one issue with his kit and I've put a ton of miles on it. Hasn't used any oil and haven't had any cooling issues. I'm thinking that most of the issues have been installation issue by not assembling parts correctly, not using a torque wrench, incorrect mixture of coolant, incorrect jetting (too lean) and other mechanical issues not related to the BB kit. It's not as easy to install these kits when you factor in that a fair amount of tuning has to happen after the install. Most of all these kits are installed by shade tree mechanics so mistakes will happen.

 

I agree that the 351 kit has been bullet proof for the most part. There have been too many in the last few months that are burning oil. Its not out of the question for a bad run of parts to come in. My ring gaps were all good and I'm not an amateur mechanic. The bike was assembled correctly. There was absolutely no positive pressure between the oil rings and the cylinder. I feel no need to elaborate or dig in deeper to the issue. I'm taking my cylinder to work to get an exact measurement and coupling that with the piston part number and ordering the correct rings from JE.

 

Go Bryan Go !

We need to continue the jetting/setup for your 351 once your cylinder wall is properly "oil controlled"...

 

Since installing my kit this spring I've had no issues either.
I think there could be many factors that may contribute to premature wear causing oil usage like the ones mentions above and perhaps incorrect break-in, abuse, etc.

 

There are too many problems at once by unrelated people to be coincidence. The first time I put the bike together, I knew that something was a bit amiss with the rings, but I had trust since the rings were gapped properly. After I changed the head gasket is when I really scrutinized everything. If the oil rings have no pressure against the cylinder wall and it burns oil, it can't be blamed on some mystery variable that no one has seen. Its the oil rings. They're the wrong size. Has nothing to do with break in procedures. By the way, I break bikes in according to the traditional instruction... Softly. If put my next pay check on all of the oil burning problems being caused from this. I'm not bashing bill or his product, but its not out of the question for the wrong rings to show up or for the heat treating process on the rings to be out of spec. What I will say is that so many bikes at the same time by different people with the same problem isn't the people.

 

We are not saying that you don't have a legitimate complaint. I look at it this way. Ninety percent of installs have no issues. Nine percent will have problems that was caused by poor workmanship and one percent will have a legitimate complaint. The one percent that have an issue will complain ninety nine percent of the time.

 

These forums are largely for issues with the bike. Any time anyone has an issue,, I see that exact sentiment. I'm glad your 351 kit works great. There are a bunch of them in the past 6 months that have not. Rather than blaming every different person for the same exact problem, I'm saying to check the oil rings. Mine are the wrong size. Theirs probably are too. So this 1% business is malarkey. If there are bad rings, then its an issue that needs to be solved plain and simple.