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My oil consumption through 9900 miles has been very normal. I've had to put oil in the car twice, so nothing that seemed "wrong."
But then, today I had to put a quart of oil in the car for the third time, at 9906 miles. At 9640 miles, the dipstick read almost full, assuming I read it correctly (which is a bitch).
Most of the mileage between the check has been some "spirited" driving on some back roads, with several extreme high speed runs.
Would I expect to see higher than normal oil consumption in those conditions, or should be I contacting my service advisor for an oil consumption check?
Yes, I did post about the PCV valve, but here's a gloomy follow-up.
My car was put on the GM oil consumption test; they topped it off, changed to the new PCV valve, and told me to come back after 1,000 miles.
Last week I was nearing the 1,000 mile mark, and I had periodically taken a quick look at the dipstick, but never too closely. Remarkably, the stick seemed to look like consumption wasn't too bad, and I intentionally have included some spirited driving during the test period. Well, days before I hit 1,000 miles, sure enough, on comes the dreaded LOW OIL indicator. I took the car immediately in, and after they let it sit, wiped the dipstick several times and read it trying to get a valid reading, added some oil, repeated the wipe/read test, they concluded it was close to 2 quarts low. :eek:
So, next week I'll schedule to get the new rings per the current GM TSB. Good luck with yours. :seeya
Re: oil consumption during high speed use (vetterdstr)
While running on the Road courses I can count on using 1 quart per 100 miles. When I am driving on the street my car used no oil.
vetterdstr :cheers:
Same with me. When I'm running around the street, driving moderately aggressively, I need a fresh quart every 3-4k miles, but on a roadcourse, I can go through a court in an hour or two of HARD driving with rpms STAYING above 4000rpm for 20-30minutes at a time. :D Nothing to worry about. :D :cheers:
Re: oil consumption during high speed use (chadwick)
Are any of you noticing more oil use if you drive it hard before the oil warms up fully? I did with my 2001 Coupe.
Do your exhaust tips get black when you drive around? Mine did, so I cleaned them, then let the car idle until the oil was above 190°. When I went out, the tips stayed clean. Same thing at the track (and no oil use).
I'm guessing that heat related expansion may have something to do with it. Waiting for my sessions to start at the track meant that the car sat for a while, and cooled down to 160° or so. Oil use was much higher after the car had cooled down.
Re: oil consumption during high speed use (TooManyIDs)
TooManyIDs,
You might be onto something there concerning oil consumption rate vs:warmup/oil temp.
I think the pistons are cam ground (elliptical in shape) to compensate for the difference in expansion between the axis of the piston parallel to the wrist pin and the piston axis perpendicular to the wrist pin.
So what it amounts to is, the piston isn't at it's optimum shape until it reaches operating temp. That also is what contributes to the piston slap heard during warm up...at least to a certain extent. Some swear the piston to cylinder wall tolerances are poor.