Conference terri::cars_uk

2041.0. "Oil consumption and rusty petrol can!" by VARDAF::CHURCH (Dave Church@VBE (DTN 828-6125)) Mon Mar 15 1993 13:25

    I've searched through the conferences but gave up after checking about
    100+ notes for "oil" and I also started checking for rust as well. 

    I/we have a 5+ year old Toyota Corrola liftback (60,000 kms on the
    clock) and we had a "slight" problem with it one day while driving back
    down a mountain basically the oil light came on and there was a strange
    "knocking" noise coming from the engine! Anyway as my wife had been
    driving it for a number of months I had got out of the habit of
    checking the oil level!! My wife said, as we sat there, that the oil
    light had come on a couple of times before but didn't say much about
    it, as we had a simliar "problem" with an old car of ours where the oil
    light would come on occasionally when going round a bend due to a loose
    connection and it went out again, she thought that this was the case
    here. The knocking (that's too severe more like tapping) was basically
    when easing off on the revs especially around the 1600-2000 revs mark.

    When checking the oil level all that I found was basically black
    sludge, way below the high and low mark on the dip stick. We were
    extremely lucky to find a garage open about 1km down the road (Sunday
    and way out in the countryside). Needless to say I took it extremely
    easy on the way home and changed the oil and filter the next day to
    see what damage could be seen in the oil etc.

    The Toyota garage in Cannes was asking FF14,000 (1,400 UK pounds) to
    "fix" it, get stuffed was my reply and in the end we (Aussie friend and
    myself) dropped the sump and had a look around. It turned out that only
    1 "slipper" was buggered and the crank just needed a touch with very
    fine wet and dry just to remove/smooth a very small blemish. This was
    about 1 year ago now.

    I've noticed that over the last 3 months it's consumed about 1 litre of
    oil, I hadn't registered before to it needing such toping up but maybe
    it did but I can't remember.

    What is a fair oil consumption for a car after such
    mistreatment/age/km? From what I can see there is no point at which oil
    is leaking (no marks on the ground) and so I suppose I must be burning
    it slightly (I should follow my wife one day to check what's emitting
    from the exhaust). 


    Second question. I lent a petrol can (the non explosive type which has
    the wire "gauze" inside) to a friend and they left the top off of it
    and so when I finally got it back it had rusty water in it. Since then
    I have dried it out, but do I risk using it again? I don't really want
    to throw it away as I haven't seen them down this way and I prefer to
    have this type in the back of the car rather that a "conventional"
    type. Also to add insult to injury he managed to lose the rubber
    sealing ring on the cap. I got it from Halfords when I was back in the
    UK. Does anyone know if I can buy a replacement ring for it, in fact I
    would like to get 3 so I have 2 spare in case of future losses?

    Cheers,

    Dave

Dave,

Cannot help you on the second question, but regarding the first, I wish my car
went through oil like yours !  I have  a GM Nova SR and it goes through oil at
the rate of about a litre every 1000 miles !  Or put another way, a litre every 
two weeks !!  AND that is *normal* for my type of car.  If you dont believe that
check out note 362.forty something (the Nova SR note where I raised my *problem*).
 
Therefore, my suggestion would be to not worry about the consumption too much.


Warren (Who_keeps_Duckhams_in_business)

    Warren,
    
    I'm not tooooo worried, but as it's the car that my wife drives
    normally with 2 young kids in the back I prefer to be forewarned of any
    pending/potential problems plus I don't drive it that often so unless
    she tells me when she starts to hear or see something strange I
    generally don't find out until it is too late!
    
    Dave

    Dave,
    
    The oil comsumption you mention seems very high. If you see no evidence
    of an oil leak around the engine (sump, head, front, rear, ...) then I
    suspect the rings and/or the valves/seats are dead. At this point you 
    can still try the various 'survival' products (additives) on the 
    market: Metal5, etc ...
    
    Just to be sure you could measure the compressions ...
    
    FWIW

If you were burning that much oil, you'd the blue smoke coming out of your tail
pipe.

-Al

    RE:.3: Patrick, I'll pop around and chat to you about it. From an oil
           leak point of view I had a look around last weekend but couldn't
           see anything out of the ordinary infact before we had to fart
           around with the engine to fix this problem the engine exterier
           was fairly clean (oil no where to be seen).
    
    RE:.4: Al, I must admit I haven't noticed much in the blue smoke
           department but I'll check it out more thoroughly this weekend.
           When would I most expect to see the blue plum eg. changing up
           when accelerating?
    
    Dave

I would expect the blue smoke to be on:

1. startup from cold

2. acceleration

3. Brisk deceleration and possibly a puff when shifting  (if you have a manual
   transmission)



Driving along with a steady foot probably won't yeild much blue smoke.

-Al