Excessive engine oil use on my V40

At present I own a V40 2.0 Litre SE (102,000 miles). Between the services the engine has use upto 4 litres of engine oil (no leaks).

I contacted my local Volvo independant garage (ACC Ltd, Farnborough) who I would recommend, and they said this was normal, and you can expect 5 + litres between services.

I had expected the car to fail its MOT due to the oil loss, and possible out of range emissions. The emissions were well below range, so where does the oil go?

Does any body have an Idea? or is it the engine oil elf drinking it.

I would think that if it's burning the oil at that rate,it would be smoking like an old bus going down the road.
It perhaps is only leaking when getting some speed up.
My V40 2.0 litre has done a lot more miles than yours and it does'nt use a drop between oil changes.
If yours was burning that much the cat would be jknackered and the emmisions would be way out of range,have you looked in the transmission if it's and auot or the read fluid?
There's no way it's burning that much without visible signs and the stealer is talking a load of bo******.
Check the inside of the tailpipe if the oil was coming out of there it would be wringing wet.

I was in the same mind about the oil must be getting burnt somewhere. Except for a slight seep of oil from the gearbox output seal, there are no leaks.

There is no signs of oil in the tail pipe and as i have said earlier the car was well below the limits on the emissions check.

A few bar stool mechanics in the pub surjest that because synthetic oil is used the bores never fully bed in, but surely you would burn it if residue was being left.

Lastly you can rev the nuts off the engine and no sign of smoke, except water vapour on start can be seen.

As the great words of Toya Willcock 'Its a mystery'

Regards

P.H.

get a headgasket check done - if it has gone then the oil could be leaking into the coolant, however 4 litres in a year is quite a lot to loose into there..

[CJL]

>I would think that if it's burning the oil at that rate,it
>would be smoking like an old bus going down the road.

Would it?

My girlfriend had a new 2.0l beetle that used about 3 litres every 10,000 miles and did so from day one. No signs on start up or while driving.

I agree 4 litres is excessive, but unless it's suddenly started doing it I wouldn't worry too much. I changed the oil to fully synthetic on my 100,000 mile T4 at 5,000 (and keep doing so every 5,000) and it uses maybe half a litre every 5,000 miles, which is the same as it's always done.

Colin.

[bigandquick]

Not really having the answer, and being just a little bit bored, how about looking at your oil consumption this way.

Say you get, for argument's sake, 30mpg.
That's 4546 litres/30 miles, or 151.5 ml/mile.
You are using 4000mls oil/10 000 miles, or 0.4ml/mile

Now's the bit that's probably slightly out as I don't know the specific gravity of petrol, but let's take it as the same as for water.

For each mile the fuel/air mixture used will be 2227ml

Therefore the oil consumption is 0.018% of your fuel/air consumption.
Doesn't sound quite so bad that way.

If this is totally wrong I don't really care. It killed five minutes.

I can't really help with your problem I'm afraid but I have a similar problem (maybe worse) I could really do with some advice on.

I went out today to have a check over things on the 98 V40 turbo diesel I recently broke my piggy bank and bought... and to my dismay dicovered that the radiator resevour is full of oil... how to ruin a Sunday...

The car doesn't smoke and runs well, temperature is very steady and power is good. The oil level on the dipstick was right on the maximum if not over. Could some dipstick have overfilled it and would this drive oil into the cooling sytem
Head gasket? Cracked head? End of the world?

The only other thing is there is a sqeal when the car first starts and idles for a while (like a fanbelt slipping) Could this be the water pump is kaput and oil is getting in there???

Someone please tell me it's not going to cost the earth...

Any advice GREATLY appreciated.