'71 Beetle Engine Burned Oil Then Stopped

[vwlover77]

'71 Super Beetle Autostick 1600 Dual-Port. 5000 miles on a thus-far trouble-free engine rebuild.

Driving home from work on surface streets and stopped for a traffic light. Road leading to traffic light was straight and level. I was cruising 40-45 mph for approx 1 mile prior to the stop. Looked in the rearview mirror and saw a cloud of blue smoke. Pulled into an adjacent parking lot, got out, and saw a steady stream of blue coming from the driver-side tweeter pipe only. Revved the engine and the volume of smoke increased accordingly.

Got back in and drove the remaining 2 miles home. Engine ran fine during all of this. Pulled in my driveway and got out. No smoke at idle. Revved the engine, no smoke. Shut it down and started it again about an hour later. No smoke.

What just happened?

[Amskeptic]

'71 Super Beetle Autostick 1600 Dual-Port.
cloud of blue smoke.
2 miles home.
No smoke
What just happened?

Ring gaps rotated into alignment at bottom of cylinder, then rotated away.
Usually occurs with cylinder honing that favored one stroke over the other. If new p&cs with factory honing, this is unlikely. Sometimes a slight taper or bend in the connecting rod will favor ring rotation.

Consider it a quirky charm but monitor its frequency.
Colin

[Amskeptic]

Have you been symptom-free, or is the car in winter storage?
Colin

[vwlover77]

Finally responding.... The Bus has been taking all my time!!!

I've only drove the car a few more miles following the incident and those at least were symptom-free. The weather here is failing, so there will probably be one more two-mile trip to fill the tank before removing the battery for the winter.

We'll see how it behaves next Spring.....

[chitwnvw]

How is the climate in Canton? We've had a dusting of snow in Chicago, but usually we don't get the real stuff until December. I'm hoping to get the heat going well enough that I can drive until then. 6 more weeks. It's kind of like a reverse groundhogs day. Good movie by the way.

[vwlover77]

In general, the climate here is about the same as Chicago temperature-wise, but we get a lot of clouds due to a strange interaction of Lake Erie 60 miles to the north of us with the weather systems. I've been told that Canton is the 2nd cloudiest city in the USA.

Luckily, we are far enough away from the lake to avoid being in the "snowbelt" most of the time. It starts about 25 miles north of here. But in the past few winters, our snow "dumps" have occured when moist air from the south heads this way....

Here we say if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes and it will change. We can have all four seasons in one day!!!