No ground strap equals high oil consupmtion????

OK.... Here's the scenario... my buddy is an old school hot rodder and mechanic. He's drag raced, done circle track stuff, built more hot rods in the last 50 years than most guys have seen at a car show. He runs his own repair shop and can do it all... on older stuff he's a whiz but not so much on computer controlled crap.

He knows his stuff.

His daily driver is an old late 70's vintage Mercury Zephyr with a 200-6. He's been driving it for about 2 years. The car started using a quart of oil every 300 miles and had lots of blow-by... so he pulled it down to inspect it and see what the problem was... he found all the ring gaps were straight up and down... of course this means the oil has a straight path to the combustion chamber.

So he honed the cylinders and replaced the rings... EZ job but, after 300 miles, the blow-by returned and so did the oil consumption. So he pulled it down again and found the ring gaps, again, were straight up and down.

Here's the good part... the engine did this three more times... every time he replaced the rings and the gaps aligned once again. After tearing his hair out for a bit, he called an old buddy of his who worked at a Ford garage for 30 plus years. The guy told him the answer was simple... he had a bad ground to the engine. He sez a bad engine ground will cause some static electricity which will, somehow, align the piston rings and cause the problem.

Now I've been around engines since I was 14.... 47 years as near as I can figure. I've seen a lot of weird stuff but NEVER heard of this ever. The funny thing is now, after putting on a big fricking ground strap, his Merc hasn't burned a drop of oil in 1600 miles and counting.

Soooooo the big question is... has anybody else ever heard of this deal?

 

Never heard of that one.

 

Never heard of it, but I love engine voodoo stories... Ill stay tuned to this one.

 

never heard of it before but who knows?

 

Who woulda thunk?

 

Riiiiigggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhttttttttttttttttttttttttttt...................................

 

In the ham radio world, this is known as QBS

QBS? "Are you full of shit?"

QBS./ r "Yes, yes, I am full of shit"

 

Porsche did a study of ring gap placement. It was discovered that the rings do not remain in position as an engine is running. They are constantly in motion....moving in the lands....rotating slowly.
I have rebuilt many engines.....competition use, and always place the gaps 120 degrees apart. After a race or two, the engine are taken apart and the rings are all over the place.
So........
Uh,......what to say about this ground strap business?
Horse pokey in my humble opinion.

 

I call bullshit on that one but I did have an M-16 in the Army that would magically align the gas rings after a few rounds.............hence no reload on the next round. I happened to grab my Battle Buddies bolt one day while we were cleaning. We both shot better FWIW.

 

With a bad ground, woundn't he notice a cranking problem?

 

Or a host of other symptoms? What's he smokin'?

 

Krooser im gonna add a voodoo story if i may I have a 50 ford got it running bugs worked out it was 6 volt, the only problem i had was when i would leave the house the car would start every time but every time i stoped at a friends or show it wouldent start had to jump it or push start ( i parked on a lot of hills) I had people offer alot of ideas on what the problem was but never figured it out. So i had the hood louvered hood was off three weeks i drove the car without the hood everywhere i went the car started evrey time no matter how many times i stoped fired right up, put the hood back on car wouldent start spoooookkkyyy.......

 

Whats worse than an ol man telling you a bullshit story?

Telling everyone this story like its true and you believe it.

 

Maybe it's a Ford thing: My uncle put a rebuilt 200-6 in his Falcon p'up, it would crank and crank but not start. I showed up with my girlfriend (wife now) to watch the show... after going through stuff with him my wife says, "I know what the problem is."

He says, "yeah, what's that?"

She replies, "This wrench sitting on the fender".

He looked at her like she had an eye growing out of the center of her forehead, but when he picked up that wrench the stupid car started right up! That story still makes me smile after 22 years!

 

I can say i have witnesses.

 

OK, so if he was driving this thing for 2 years, what happened to the ground strap? Did it fall off anf then the rings lined up and started smokin/usin oil? Did it always use oil and after 2 years he finally decided to tear it down and inspect? I'm thining it took the ol guy 5 times to install the rings right. Or was it 6 times? You didn't say if he took it down and redid the rings one last time and added the ground strap then. you would think he had to, cause if the rings static electrically moved without the strap, they were lined up and smokin/usin oil again as you stated, he put on the strap the rings would no longer static electrically move therefore continue to stay lined up and would be smokin/using oil insted of not burning a drop for the last 1600 miles.

Well after all that, I'm calling Bullshit.

 

Does he know that there is a top and bottom to some rings?

 

well if he hooks a ground strap to the block and it never has a problem again then i will believe in fairy tails.

 

A friend's car kept burning up emergency brake cables. Same thing..

 

Faeries dont have tails! You are thinking of GREMLINS
^^^^Brit spelling

 

I have a related story. I have a buddy who is a tech at MSD, and he told me that some engineers were dyno'ing an engine and when they grounded each head separately to the chassis instead of relying on the engine block for ground, that they picked up 8-10HP at higher RPM's.

 

I've heard of a poor or missing grounding strap causing things to heat up and smoke as the ground seeks alternate routes.

 

I found a buddy scratching his head at a smoking throttle cable because of that

 

I found a buddy smoking once, the ground chain on his wallet crossed my welding leads.....

 

Ooh ooh... buddy was tightening the + terminal and grounded the wrench through his wedding band. ---------> P A I N

 

Owns his own repair shop , built more cars than you can see in a car show , knows his stuff ! I don't think I'd be takin my wheels to him any time soon

 

sometimes unexplained phenomenon requires an answer from out where the busses don't run,,,,or maybe stuff just happens.

 

Along the same path of least resistance, more than one automatic trans has died from the engine grounding through the rear end ( my tranny guy has electrically burned clutch plates hanging on his wall).
I have seen Electricity do some pretty strange things, BUT This sounds pretty damn odd.
I,m skeptical but I am not proud enough to call Bullshit.

 

Awe come on Darrin, grow a pair!!

It don't take pride, just nuts!!!

Dude, I'm nuts, I called bullshit. See...