Baskervi

We recently purchased an '01 Civic with 120,000 miles that is consuming a lot of oil - a quart every 1200 miles or so, and it's clogged the catalytic converter. I was going to just sell it off cheap, but I started reading various forum posts last night. Many were saying that Honda says this is not excessive oil consumption. What??!!! I also read MANY posts were people fixed the problem for this particular car by replacing the valve stem seals, which I can do. I decided to check the compression today, and cylinder #1 is 208 psi, #2 is 204 psi, #3 is 207 psi, and #4 is 208 psi. This is about 50 psi more than the highest compression I found anyone posting. It was a rental compression tester, but it appeared to be in perfect shape and reset between the cylinders just fine. I have to wonder if oil leaked around the valve stem seals, which made the compression extra high. Any thoughts on this? Should I start with the valve stem seals or something else to fix the oil consumption problem? The plugs were a grayish-tan color with no indication of fowling. Thanks

holmesnmanny

those are insanely high numbers for that engine, I'm wondering if the issue is as simple as your pcv valve being bad

Baskervi

Thanks for the response. Someone else mentioned the PCV valve could be the culprit for the excessive oil consumption, so it’s being replaced today. Hopefully that will solve the issues. Take care.

Vtec04

Be sure to replace the PCV valve with an OEM one, aftermarket ones don't usually work well in Hondas. Also, that is great compression. I got 210 on all cylinders on my 2005 Civic that I just rebuilt the engine on, so those numbers are pretty darn good. You can have bad oil control rings and still have good compression, but valve seals are much more likely. Are you sure that you are burning the oil and not leaking it? Check the cam plug for leaks especially. I had oil consumption issues on my Civic, and the problem ended up being the valve seals. Good luck man

Baskervi

Doh! Too late. I used an aftermarket PCV valve. If I continue to have problems, I'll get a genuine Honda valve.

I presume that if the oil was leaking, I'd have a spot on the ground and the engine would be oily. Is this correct? If so, I don't have either of these problems. The old PCV valve was not unidirectional - the crankcase pressure could flow in both directions, and it was very crusty on the inside. The people before us obviously didn't change the oil often. I've been changing it every 3,000 miles, and just looking in the oil filler hole, it's looking quite a bit better.

Thanks for the response.

Vtec04

What oil are you using? Is there blue smoke from the exhaust when you start it after it sat for several hours? You may have clogged oil control rings. I would suggest putting half a can of Seafoam in the oil to clean the engine out since the previous owner wasn't good about oil changes. I have fixed oil consumption issues by putting Seafoam in the oil.

Baskervi

I've been using Mobil1 5W-20, and there has never been any smoke. The tailpipe is pretty black and sooty, though. I read several posts about people using Seafoam, but I've never used it before. I'll give it a shot. Thanks

Vtec04

Ok. Just wanted to make sure that you were using a good oil of the correct viscosity. Check the black cam plug on the end of the head behind the EGR valve and see if it's leaking. The tailpipe being black and sooty is normal, nothing to worry about. Good luck again