My CL is eating oil I guess. I get my oil replaced every 5000 miles but for the past 6 months, around 4500 miles my oil light shows up and the technicians claim that there is hardly any oil left.... I mostly do highway driving.

Could it be that my CL is eating oil? Where is it all going?

Sorry... I don't know a whole lot about cars....

 

Check for leaks. Park the car overnight and see if there is a puddle underneath the car. If not, youre burning oil. Could be valve seals or rings. Do you notice any smoke out of the exhaust?

Keep topping off the oil every 1k miles or so so you dont destroy the engine.

 

please update this thread. my cl engine is consuming oil as well. i cant see smoke in my mirror but apparently it is burning some. i just cant believe its all getting burned, some of it has to be leaking

 

you won't see the oil being burned unless you floor the car and are in the car behind yours. then you'd notice some burning.

it can be burnt through blowby which is when ur piston rings have worn and the oil is slowing passing by. and can be burnt off other ways as well.

if you got no drips coming from the car and ur oil is mysteriously disappearing then the car is burning it off.

if you want proof.. floor the car and have a buddy in a car behind you... i can almost guarantee it will be able to be seen and or smelt at that point.

that's your confirmation.

FYI my previous car burnt 3 quarts of oil in between a 5K change... so you probably are not burning THAT much.

 

@civicdrivr -- I have checked the bottom of the car and there seems to be no oil on the ground.... however I have noticed smoke coming out of the exhaust a few times...

So lets just say that the seals are fuc%ed up..... what kind of a damage or repairs could we be talking about here? just a wild guess

@ phee -- dude... that's exactly what I'm thinking.... can the CL really burn 3.5 quarts of oi in a matter of 4500 miles?

 

@ CLS Prog ---Thanks bud... ill give it the smell test this afternoon... lets see what it reveals...

Thanks for all the help gents...

 

to fix it bro the odds are the pistons need to be removed and new rings possibly one size larger need to be put in.

like if you want it 100% fixed the motor should be pulled and fully revamped.

I'd do a port polish and 3 angle valve job if and when I do have to pull the motor in the distant future. only have 133000kms on it so i got a while. But when it does... i'm taking the liberty of modding the motor big time

 

a compression test would really let you know how the motor is holding up.

 

houseape: i wouldnt go right ahead and say the rings are bad. if you have bad rings you WILL SEE A LOT OF SMOKE., youll see it while idling, youll see it while driving, youll see it while cruising etc. etc.

i have blamed mine on my exhaust valve guide seals. easy way to tell if your seals are leaking is to remove the exhaust manifold and look at the valve stems through the port, if you have what looks like oil burn residue or a trail of oil then its the seals.

the same can be done with the intake seals by removing the manifold and the plenums.

my intake valves are evenly colored black and i havent inspected my exhaust ones yet because i have a custom exhaust thats welded to my jpipe.

 

a compression test is nice and all but i would recommend a leakdown test. this will test your headgasket along with your valves and rings.

if you would rather do a compression check then do it when the car has been off for at least 6 hours. all the cylinders should be within 5%-10% of psi from each other. if you have an anomoly you can pour a cap full of oil in the spark plug socket and see if the compression raises.

if the oil makes your compression raise then you have a bad ring.

 

A good way to check the valve seals is to let the car sit overnight on level ground. Then after it has sat for about 12 hours have someone start it for you while you watch the exhaust for any smoke. The idea is that when A car sits oil will seep past the valve seals and enter the intake track and if the valve is open it will enter the combustion chamber and burn off during start up. Also once the car warms up they ussually stop leaking, unless they are really bad and then smoke would be very noticable.

Remember that once the CAT is warmed up it will easily burn up any small amounts of oil smoke. So if you have a small amount of oil being burned it might be hard to see.

Blue smoke is oil, white is water, black is fuel.

Another thing to check is the coolant. look for signs of oil ie. milky,white, oily water. If you have a head gasket leak you can get oil in the coolant.

Oh yea, what Phee said, the leak down test is good. But it will only tell you if there is a leak. it won't tell you if its a valve seat leaking or a piston ring leaking. But it will tell you if you need to open the engine up. Also since you said you don't know much about cars the leakdown we are talking about is not checking for oil leaks. it looks for air leaking out of the cylinder. So if air gets buy then so can oil. Just an fyi.

If it is the rings you would have to remove the pistons and re ring them. You have to stick with OE size. You can't (as it was suggested above) go one size up unless you take the block out and have it bored at a machine shop for the new rings. If you are not looking for extra dissplacment I would just hone the cylinder while it was in the car, along with new rings.

 

Very good advice. I didn't recommend the turn on test because a lOt of cars smoke in the winter upon startup.

 

Could be hard to tell between oil and just the heat, I hear ya. Might have to get up close and take a good wiff of that good stuff!

 

Come to think of it, I had the EXACT same problem with my other '92 Sentra 5speed when I would travel between Dallas and Austin, Texas which is over 200 miles one way. The car would eat oil, but it wouldn't show signs of smoke through the exhaust. I woke up one morning and the oil level on the dip stick was nearly gone thats how low it had gotten, but amazingly the car did not overheat or lock up etc and I am still driving it to this day.
-Now for the diagnosis that solved my problem. I had a 'rocker gasket' that had gone very hard and brittle and let oil pass through the valve cover and into the pcv valve I believe only when I was driving at high speeds for a long time. This little slot apparently lets the engine release excess pressure/air into the pcv valve and thus, into the intake manifold.





This is where mine went:


I don't know how relevant the is information is since the cars are different and if the CL engine has this 'gasket rocker' or not, but it's worth a shot since this was the same problem I was facing with my old car.

 

What about takw off the oil cap and start up the engine. Put your hand by the hole and check if that throws oil?

 

I think tr is onto something. I found a shit ton of oil in my manifold today

 

This much or moar ?

 

dude my bro's prelude has been driven with alomsot zero oil and nothing happened to it accept when u add oil it burnt even more lol..

same with my ford probe.. I ran that thing dry practically... with like 1 quart of oil in it at the time and i was ripping it all over the place... still didn't do anything to the car accept make it burn more... lol

maybe it's luck i dunno... but running low on oil in my experience only will make u burn even more oil when u go to top it up. catastrophic failure is pretty hard to come by by running low on oil... so i've experienced at least.. which is a good thing. cause eventually... any engine will start burning oil when it's high high mileage

 

smh. please refrain from giving advice if you dont have facts to prove it. have you ever torn down an engine that ran low on oil? it DOES cause damage, it scores cylinder walls, burns seals, scored bearings and could cause breakage of rocker arms. sure it doesnt happen instantly but saying it doesnt cause any damage is bad information.

 

Some oil in our CL & TL manifolds is OKAY and normal as StreetKA has shown a picture of.

 

This.

 

When i took mine off it had just a little bit less oil in there. I did not think anything of it. But I had far far less carbon biuld up in the vanes. But then again I only had like 68K miles when i cleaned mine.

So yes, i also think some oil in there is normal.

 

Yea, oil does pass through the PCV on the rear valve cover. A catch can will stop that though.

 

True. That's what the pcv system does. But mine was excessive. I had puddles that were about 10-12 cm deep. Normally it puddles enough that u can still see the casting marks below the oil. Streetka is on the higher side but still exceptable from my experience with these engines.

Where is houseape? WE WILL FIGURE THIS OUT!

 

My God man clean those EGR passages...

 

Put a catch can in guys. I did and I was totally surprised at how much oil it caught. I had pools of oil in the manifold when I opened it up. After that, I put the catch can it.

 

My intake is nice and clean.

 

Is it just me or do we tend to agree on a lot of the same things for the CL, civic? lol guess great minds do think alike.

 

 

This guys problem is obviously more severe than just adding a catch can. He loses wayyy too much oil which the addition of a catch-can cannot justify. If he did add a catch-can, he would have to customize it with a return line back to the oil pan somehow because otherwise it would overflow with the amount of oil he's losing.

BTW HouseApe, any updates??

 

I definitely agree with that. The amount of oil pictured above is what I was addressing. Clearly there is a bigger problem if they are burning though nearly all of the oil in 5k miles.

 

I'd say piston rings are gone, just my honest opinion, only way to know is to tear the engine down though.

 

Done. Lol

 

Installing a catch can could show if it is the pcv system malfunctioning. If the catch can overflows rapidly we can pin point the problem. If there isn't any oil or very little it means it's getting burned through the rings or seals

 

ill bet money ur right ... the catch can is a good idea and ill bet it does fill rapidly ... ill also bet this may have contributed to my cat failure i used to burn a qt a month ... and my engine was a brand new rebuild ... all of the test mules for the first 3.5s were burning tons ... id say its pcv and never was ring s

 

I've replaced my pcv valve so it may not be the valve.

 

Ot. Type-r can u send me a dyno of your car? I want to compare mine to yours. I want to see if tq curve is the reason you ran almost a second faster than me!

 

Its probably the torque and the consistency of the auto trans.

 

That's what I am thinking. But I want to see the curves.

 

dunno if i have a copy anywhere anymore ...if it helps u any the shape is the same as a typical auto I/H/E ... JUST 232 INSTEAD of 190 or whatever they dyno