With Lovert Mafukure

MY car consumes a lot of oil and I have to top up every now and then. How can I rectify this problem?

We are back again, new week new problems. Cars never seem to run forever with no problems. This week one of our readers has a common problem — excessive oil consumption.

We will look at possible causes and possible remedies to his problem. Without much background info we will look at most possible causes and likely remedies.

It might seem pretty straight forward but the first thing to check is for oil leaks.

If your car is by any chance leaking some oil then your guess is right, your oil is going back to nature. Whenever you top up your oil, never overfill, that is how oil leaks start. If you overfill your engine with oil, you will eventually blow oil seals. With too much oil and pressure inside the engine, it will look for release points and the weakest points are oil seals. You can give your engine a good wash and then check for any leaks on the engine. It might just be as simple as oil leaking out of the engine.

The usual suspect areas for leaks are camshaft and crankshaft seals, the valve/tappet cover gaskets, sump gaskets and the like. The simple way out of a leaky situation as this one would be to replace the leaking seals or gaskets. It’s not much of a big job to cost a lot of money.

If you are certain that you do not have any oil leaks then the engine may be burning oil. Burning oil may not be an immediate problem to worry about if your engine is a high mileage one.

High mileage engines start burning more oil with time. If it hasn’t started causing other problems then it shouldn’t be an immediate attention seeker. Problems that usually arise with oil consumption are fouled plugs and consequently the irritating miss-fire. Apart from that, oxygen sensors and catalytic converters can and will be affected by an engine consuming a lot of oil.