Stuominous

d16y7 engine, d16y8 tranny, aem intake, 4-2-1 header, 2.25" exhaust
178,xxx miles (not that much)

I'm burning a lot of oil. I go through about 4+ qts (US) between oil changes.

I switched from Valvoline MaxLife Synthetic Blend 5W30 to Kendall Synthetic Blend about 2 months ago to see if that would help. Still the same.

I might drive a bit hard from time to time, but why so much burning?

It was suggested to me that I could move to 10W30 - what would this actually provide? I have read a few bits of info on oil, but am unwilling to dump something in my car that would injure the fella.

Furthermore, if I change oil weights, I feel I might be putting a band aid on a bullet wound.

Where should I start looking to find out WHY I'm burning so much oil? What do I do first?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Fliptard

do a compression test. If your not leaking it, your most likely burning it. Time for new rings. How does your oolant look? Nice and green, or oily and brown? A leakdown test will deff tell where your oil is going, whether through the rings and burning, or HG is bad and leaking into the coolant. You can also tell if it's getting into the coolant by removing your rad can (wilst cold) and start it, if you get alot of bubbles, your headgasket is bad.

TomCat39

You can pull your spark plugs and see if they are oil fouling. If they are you are burning the oil over leaking it (even though you could be doing both).

Before you pull the plugs, start the car and bring the rpm up to about 2500 for about 30-45 seconds. Make sure you don't see any smoke from the tail pipe.

After that, shut her off and pull the plugs. You can shine a flashlight down into each cylinder and see if the cylinders are dry around the edges. If they are then you can do a nice fast test to see if you have bad rings (oil and/or compression).

At this point you disconnect the fuel injector plugs and the two distributor plugs.

With the spark plugs out, the dizzy disconnected and the injectors disconnected, crank the car over for about 20 seconds.

Now inspect the cylinders again with the flashlight. If you see oil pooling around the edges of any of the cylinders, you have bad rings in that cylinder.

With the oil pooling around the piston edges, you will get the wet compression numbers on a compression check.

To get the dry numbers on the cylinders that pool oil, you will have to burn off the oil again at 2500 rpm, then pull the plugs, dizzy wires and injector wires again, then test the oily cylinder(s) first.

If your dry compression numbers are good and you are getting pooling oil, then it's likely stuck oil control rings.

Stuominous

Okay.

Coolant is clean. Plugs are dry and good. Everything else tests fine. Therefore, rings and headgasket. Not entirely excited about having this done. I'd have to do massive research to do this myself. I think this level of repair is far outside of my current ability/experience.

Any suggestions from someone that knows how to do it, where to start, or just what s/he is doing? I admittedly DON'T know where to start except jack up the car and slide underneath.

To give a view of my meager experience: I have done my own brake lines, brakes, rear hub assembly replacement, replaced oil pan/gasket, installed aftermarket fog lights, rewired my front wiper motor/relay (I'll swear it was possessed. I've exorcised that demon), replaced front lower control arms, replaced outer tie rods, and various other minor maintenance things/installations.

Suggest what to do, I'm looking for all the help I can get. I'll be Googling away and looking at YouTube also.

Thanks.

tamboo

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...ic+head+gasket

sent you a pm with link to fsm at h***ahookup. 8)

grjr

no need to disconnect the injectors if the distributor is unplugged, without a crank/cam/tdc signal from the distributor the ECU won't fire the injectors.

OP, check your PCV system... oil can get sucked into the intake through there. But if you're losing 4 qts then you probably have more serious issues. Stop using synthetic.. no point in throwing your money away at this point.