‘My car must be running on oil and not fuel’

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 information, 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. Oil changes and oil top ups are easy and they come with a simple rule, never overfill! If you overfill your engine with oil, you will eventually blow oil seals. Excess oil and pressure 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 shouldn’t cost a lot of money but it could cost you your engine.

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 convertors can and will be affected by an engine consuming a lot of oil. Sensors will get coated with oily residues and catalytic convertors will get clogged up and eventually retard engine performance.

An engine that consumes oil is easy to identify because of the colour of the smoke from the exhaust. Blue smoke is almost a sure sign that your engine is burning oil. You’d need then to identify where the problem is coming from. Does it smoke continuously? Does it smoke it the after parking for a while only? If the smoke goes away after running the engine for a while the problem may lie with upper half of the engine — the cylinder head. It may possibly be worn valve guides or seals. It means oil drips into the combustion chambers when engine is idle and gets burnt when you start up the engine. Such a car may miss-fire on first start up because of that.

On the other hand, if the engine rings are worn out you will find that the car smokes most the time even after running it for a while. It means the oil scrapper rings are no-longer sealing well and oil finds its way into combustion chamber. A simple compression test can tell you how much life you have left in your engine. A simpler equation to help you ascertain goes like so...smoke under load usually points to worn rings, smoke with no load usually points to valve stem seals or worn valve guides.

Since vehicles with high mileage naturally consume oil more than lower mileage engines, it is good to change to high mileage oil which is specially formulated to lower oil consumption on older vehicles with high mileage. This may not always solve the problem but it’s well worth a try.

Leaks as I mentioned earlier are easier to deal with and require one to replace the seals and gaskets with new ones. Gaskets lose their strength with time and need replacing overtime. This does not really cost a fortune.

Valve seals and guides require specialist mechanics to replace. It may or may not cost a lot of money to replace valve stem seals depending on how the mechanic decides to do it. Naturally, the head has to come off to replace the seals but there are shortcuts like pressurising the cylinders to keep the valves from falling into the chamber. It may keep the costs down if the mechanic is willing to go that route.

Worn rings mean one thing and that is major engine overhaul which might cost you a bit of money and has to be done right. Whatever the case may be, it requires immediate attention because it may eventually cost you the whole engine. There are some engines which naturally consume oil due to some design flaws and they do keep you on your toes always checking the oil level

Till next time...keep the wheels spinning! Feedback

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