My girlfriend has a 97 Prelude, bone stock with 170K miles on it. It's using almost a half a quart a day, it's ridiculous. I climbed under there and looked today and it was leaking a little in a couple of places but not enough to drip on the ground. If she parks somewhere for awhile and leaves the car running, when she drives off, it's like the smoke screen on that old spy hunter game. Once she drives awhile it clears up. I pulled the plugs today and there was no oil on them, they were dry. The bumper has black specks which look like oil all over it. I checked the compression and they were all around 190 besides number 3 which was around 175-180. Anybody have any ideas what this could be? I've seen other people say that their PCV valves were stuck open causing them to lose alot of oil through the exhaust but I'm not sure about that. Thanks for the help in advance guys!

 

First you should start with the obvious, clean the entire engine then run it and find out exactly where your leaks are. As for the burning, could have some bad rings on cylinder 3 considering the mileage and lower compression readout.

 

If she is sitting for a while. I wanna bet the valve seals are bad. Check the pcv valve first as its cheaper than valve seals.

 

valve seals are the culprit. If the are bad once the car is off oil will leak past them and sit on the back of the valve until the car is started and then the oil is sucked into the cylinder where it is burnt. It seems worse after the car sits for a while because there is a larger amount of oil in the cylinder.

 

^X2, Valve seals. You can try the PCV valve first but more then likely your seals are bad. It does have higher mileage, i don't know if you can on honda's but many cars they can me changed without having to take the head off....

 

the PCV valve will not cause a build up of oil on start up. once the engine is off there is no pressure to vent out of the crankcase.

 

you should try the old trick coast down the hill and when you get to the bottom hit the gas if it smokes i believe its a head issue and if at a stop sign you go and it smokes usually its a ring issue.
(im rebuilding my entire engine because of burning oil, drove it like a granny 1/2 quart per week. hit vtech oil would go empty by the end of the street ...) good luck man