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High oil consumption

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Old Feb 26th, 2019, 14:51   #1
snowden
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Default High oil consumption

My 1.8 petrol C30 seems to have a pretty high oil consumption. I'm not sure if this is leaking outside of the engine or being burnt - when I set off after engine braking for a while there's a nice cloud of smoke left behind.

I noticed the right of the rocker cover was damp with oil (photo attached) and there was a small puddle of oil to the left of the grey block in the photo, next to the cover.

Would it be worth checking that PCV is working properly? I'm hoping it's not worn piston rings as that'd no doubt be too expensive on what was a £1.9k car!

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Old Mar 2nd, 2019, 19:00   #2
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"When I set off after engine braking for a while there's a nice cloud of smoke left behind."

That sounds like worn valve stem seals allowing the vacuum under engine braking to pull oil past the valve stem into the combustion chamber.

Cheapest thing to fix provided you can do it without removing the cylinder head which is possible for many cars - trick is to stop a valve without spring/collets from dropping into the bore....
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Old Mar 4th, 2019, 09:22   #3
Welton
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I've not heard of worn valve stem seals since the 1990's, it just doesn't seem to be a thing now (seal design took care of that).

1.8 petrol's very often use oil lots of people have posted about it, I personally believe the engines left the factory with fully synthetic oil and if driven gently never got the chance to bed-in effectively.

In your case; smoke after the over-run would point to a breather problem, would be worth checking through the system's various hoses for damage/splits and change the PCV valve etc...
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Old Mar 4th, 2019, 15:29   #4
snowden
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Will start with checking the PCV first, that's something I've not done properly yet (and it does possibly seem to cause high oil consumption).

Not sure on how well the car has been handled before I bought it, it apparently had 5 previous owners - I run it with reasonable quality semi-synth 10W40 in an attempt to quench it's thirst.

Failing that, time to start phoning around and getting quotes for a professional diagnosis of it...
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Old Mar 4th, 2019, 15:58   #5
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I would start with doing a compression test. Can easily be done at home with a little mechanical knowledge and some not too expensive equipment. You'll be able to have a look at the state of the plugs at the same time - might shed some light on the problem.

Last edited by PNM; Mar 4th, 2019 at 16:01.
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Old Mar 8th, 2019, 19:18   #6
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Smile Another idea

One other idea might be worth a check, could the engine not be getting up to the correct 89/90c coolant temp quickly due to a sticky or failing thermostat ?,, had some recent experience of a C30 petrol that was consuming a lot of oil on short runs, esp with lower temps in winter, the dash temp gauge isnt really linear, and say at 80c shows vertical, same thing at 90c so best way is to use a cheap obd reader and something like the torque app to see whats really going on with coolant temp, the 1.8 and 2L petrols are mazda based engines.
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Old Apr 6th, 2019, 14:57   #7
snowden
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After revisiting this and getting round to doing the PCV test with a rubber glove over the oil filler, it turns out there's quite a lot of pressure in there that's easily noticed when the oil fill cap is removed... A rubber glove inflates quite readily when put over the top of the filler.

Could this be a symptom of something else wrong, or is it worth just trying a pcv swap first?
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