ok...here's the scenario...i'm burning oil....lots of oil....2 quarts every 1500 miles to be exact, but i can't figure out why....here's what i know

my car doesn't have any leaks as far as i can tell...there's no oil on my driveway or anywhere i stop and whenver i'm under my car working on it i never see any oil stains or anything that looks like a leak

my car only smokes when i engage VTEC, but it spits black smoke rather than blueish white smoke like it should if i'm burning oil...it spews a big cloud right as i engage and then sort of streams slightly all the way to redline

i've checked the plugs and they look fine...dark at the threads and white at the tip...if i was running really rich, like the black smoke would indicate, they should be at least partially stained black...and if i had a blown ring(s), chances are they would have oil on them...that confuses the hell out of me

perhaps the most confusing thing of all though was the compression test i did...

1 = 140
2 = 142
3 = 147
4 = 153

not TOO far apart, but oddly low for a 10.6 CR...truth be told my friends compression tester is a few years old and probably isn't the most accurate thing on the market, but we did a compression test on my friends H23 to get some numbers to compare it to...

1 = 120
2 = 150
3 = 145
4 = 155

his number one has a blown head gasket or a screwed up valve or something were not sure of yet, but all his other numbers were higher than mine despite the fact that his CR is only 9.8...i was seriously frightend until my friend (the one with the compression tester) said that his numbers were as low as mine and his CR was 10.1...so i'm not sure what to think about my numbers

the thing that makes me worry the most though that i've somehow managed to blow all my rings or something catastrophic like that is that me and my friend with the blown head gasket H23 raced the other night and i lost...we started from a roll in 2nd gear and i was sitting at 5500 when we hit it...PRIME positioning to just hit VTEC and take the **** off...he hit it first and got the jump on my *** and i slammed on it hard and power shifted the **** out of all the gears to ensure my victory...but i didn't even catch him until the end of 3rd and barely squeaked by when we ended at the end of 4th...him and i both agree that i should have smashed on his *** much worse than that

the car is 2001 and under warranty still and i've already taken it to the dealership twice...the first time they changed my oil and said "come back in 1000 miles and we'll let you know"...because of work/school and other things i wasn't able to get it back until several months later and somewhere around 1500 miles...because it had been so much longer than i had expected i had completely forgotten what my starting miles were...and the dealership i took it too after my 1000 miles were up had no record of what the starting miles were, being that they were in nor cal and i had origionally taken the car to a dealership in so cal (i live in so cal, but go to school in nor cal)...so 2 days after i dropped it off at the nor cal dealership, they said "since you don't know exactly how many miles it's been, we can't do an oil consumption test. so we're going to change your oil again and we want you to come back ever 500 miles for 1500 miles"...but because of the fact that the closest dealership to me in nor cal is 30 miles away, making it impossible to get a ride back from the shuttle, and i'm only 20, not allowing me to be able to rent a car...i have no way of getting the car back to them every 500 miles....so until the summer when i'm back home and within 1 mile of a dealership i just have to stay below VTEC and watch my oil like a hawk

i've discussed my situation many times with many different friends and gear heads, but no one has been able to come up with ANY kind of definite answer...does ANYONE on this board have even the SLIGHTEST idea of wtf is going on under the hood of my car??? because it's getting to the point where i just want to drop a rock or a bag full of sand in my intake manifold and take it to acura with a confused and sad look on my face and just demand for a new motor since it's under warranty

thanks,
andrew

 

First, a new compression tester is only about 20$ or so.
My 97 ITR with 118K miles on it had compression numbers i the 215-225 range, but still burnt some oil at the high end of VTEC. That motor is still running and the turbo motor will be up and running shortly.

You may have run the oil too low, once to often and ruined all the rings.

 

mine does to and it's a 2000 wid 45000 miles on it. from what i've gathered is that everyone's is doing it...

i change my oil every 3000 miles and i check it all the time...

 

yeah, a lot of other R owners i've talked to just tell me to suck it up and deal with it, but the fact that i lost to my friend's H23 makes me think i'm also losing power, which could mean something big like blown ring(s)

 

Use 10W60 Castrol RS Racing and look how thing go.
That`s what I would try before I`d pull off the head to check the rings

That oil burning problem sounds familiar to me.. I had this with a Celica T18. She sucked up the oil at negative pressure when pushing down the pedal at lower rpms and burnt it through the exhaust.. Switching to 10W60 solved the problem.


[Modified by ITR1858, 2:08 PM 3/28/2003]

 

i've tried a couple different oils to try and make it burn less or not at all...nothing seems to work, but i'll give it a try...i have a baaaaad feeling the problem is much worse than the type of oil i'm using

 

I have the same problem on a 98 with 52,000 miles. Me and a couple friends have been looking into it, haven't pulled the head or anything but, we think its either the rings or valve seats so I too doubt its your oil choice, but I'm no mechanic though, Good Luck