Ok, about a year ago my oil light started coming on. Alarmed, I checked the oil and sure enough the car was nearly out of oil. My first thought was I had an oil leak, but there were no spots in the driveway or the garage. I checked the under carriage and there were no signs of oil leaks. I watched my tail pipe in the morning and while I was driving didn't seem to notice any blue smoke so I was really dumbfounded where it was going. Bottom line, the car was defintely losing oil as the oil light kept coming on and sure enough the oil was low. That being said, I am now going through a quart about every 2000 miles. Seeing no oil on the ground and on the chassis, it has to be burning the oil. As far as how this occurred, I have no idea. I bought the car with 27,000 miles on it and changed the oil religiously. I now have 115,000.

I have been keeping a case of oil in the trunk and adding oil as needed but this hardly the way I envisioned operating my Acura TL. So the question now is do I buy a new engine, rebuild the one I got, or dump the car. My quick research says a new engine is $5000 not including installation which I'm guessing is probably a $1000. Rebuild? I really have no idea how much?

Any opinions on the route I should take?

Thanks in advance for the replys.

 

The oil light is for oil pressure not oil level. The reason the light glows is that the oil pump is starved for oil when low on capacity so better keep it within the allotted range so no serious engine damage is done. You'll see no blue smoke out the pipes as the converter remedies that situation, but if the valve stem oil seals are leaking, you’d see a puff when first started. Actually a qt every 2000 miles is not uncommon, although, I might venture to say most Acura owners are not in that category

As far as jumping the gun on an engine transplant, I would change the oil when needed and just keep driving the car. As I said before a quart low in 2000 miles is certainly not the end of the world.

Don’t know what type of oil you’re using, so if you supply the make/viscosity, it may help if another is selected.

 

Castrol 5W-30

 

when the oil light kept coming on it was a sign of real trouble
They call them idiot lights for a reason,,now some idiot is going to charge you a bunch of money

the oil is the life blood of the engine and running more than 1 qt low- the bottem of the range on dipstick- is losing half the cooling abilty of the oil
then the coolant also suffers extra load

first you need a compression check of each cylinder, dry and wet (with a squirt of oil in cyl to help seal rings to test them) accompanied by a `cylinder leak down` test to see if its valve seals and rings

any engine run low like that several times has usually trashed some important parts.
easier to get a junkyard- now called auto recyclers- motor- do a timing belt and water pump on it and drop in

Something happened in the car history we are not hearing- what overheat caused the oil loss prob to start with
What miles when prob started and how long have you been driving it like this?

Some oil USE is normal in the range of .3 to 1 qt between changes
A reason many of us throw in 5 qts at change

 

Start using high mileage oil. If you are using synthetic, switch back to dino. No point in burning expensive oil.

 

high mileage oil contains extra conditioners for the seals
The real problem must be found and repaired- this thing i susing way to much oil

May as well run it on the cheapest stuff at parts store if its just blowing past the rings

No amount of seal swell will solve that situation
Say that 3 times fast!!

 

not sure what i could be missing. No issues from 27,000 until about 85,000 miles. I have no doubt there was signifigant damage from the first time the oil light came on. I just don't understand why it happened the first time. I grew up wrenching motors and have always performed routine maintenance on all my cars and the TL was certainly no exception. bottom line, it happened.

I concluded shortly after i purchased the car the previous owner didn't treat this car very good...brakes were gone and 3 of the 4 tires didn't match. My fault for not noticing but it was raining cats and dogs when i test drove the car and I simply overlooked it - my focus was previous damage (i.e. overspray, replaced panels, etc). Anyway, considering it was driven pretty hard, I guess it could be concluded they didn't bother to change the oil either.

Now, I admit that I drive pretty hard too (lots of WOT) but that doesn't mean I don't take care of my car. I've had lots of cars and this is the first that ever consumed oil. In fact, I've never even had a car that leaked oil except for a valve cover gasket on my 1980 Corolla.

It sure has been a fun car when its not giving me issues, but it sure has been the source of a lot of head aches over the past 3 years...never been able to stop it from pulling to one side, rattles, squeaks, transmission sticking in 3rd gear, half shaft gone after 30,000 miles, rims breaking on the most minor potholes, 2 windshields, half the instrument lights gone out, driveline vibration, power steering seal gone bad. Every problem I've had has been repeated in this forum about 500 times. Not at all what I expected when I bought this car. I've had 2 accords, 2 civics and my wife had an oddesey and is on her second accord...all these vehicles ran perfect from day one until the day we sold/traded them. I don't get it - Acura is Honda, Honda is Acura - why would the most expensive version be plagued with so many problems.

I get that forums are for people to list their problem/solutions and not for people to sing about how great their car is...not that folks don't do that ;-). But it does seem there are some very common problems that carry from one generation of Acura to the next.

Sorry for the long rant - I'm really disappointed. Had visions of driving this car to 200,000+ miles.

 

that is definitely not normal to consume that much oil in such a short amount of time. The oil is going somewhere and your going to have to figure out where. Also have you been using that same type of oil since you bought it or have you been changing brands? Change from DINO to synthetic at any point?

 

always castrol and one synthetic about 15,000 miles ago

 

Your car will go 200k no problem as long as it's maintained properly. If you have to add a quart every 2k it's not completely abnormal. You're more on the high side of normal.

I service my car right when it hits 15% on the MID. That's about 6200miles or so. In that time the car has burned up to .5 of a quart to staying right at the full mark. That's probably dependent on how hard or easy I drive it.

 

you said that this happened around 85K, did you do anything right before that point or right after it? From what I have been told, switching from DINO to synthetic at high miles isn't good for the seals as DINO oil has this "property" that causes the seals to swell and allow for a good seal. Over time the seals absorb it and get used to it, but when you go to synthetic they are no longer swollen and thus allow oil to be burned.

 

Hmm...this is odd. If you've put the car up on a lift and verified that you can't see any oil, maybe you should have a trusted mechanic take a look?

 

agreed. do you have a carfax on this car? a modern Honda engine like one on the TL shouldnt burn that much oil. switching between different oil makes or overfilling the crankcase are only masking the problem.

you dont want to starve the engine of oil under heavy load, unless you plan on getting a brand new motor.

 

Sorry for hijacking your thread, but I have a quick question about the above quote. If I have been using dino for the life of the car thus far (@ 74k miles) (and not using any particular brand of oil), will it be detrimental to my car if I switch to synthetic at around 76-78k miles (my approx next oil change)?

 

I replaced the timing belt/water pump around 97,000....and brakes, rotors, tires and rims. Oh, and the serpentine belt and new O-ring for the power steering pump. I've been running a K&N filter since about 35,000....new cabin filter.....battery.

 

I'm not quite sure about this, maybe another member can chime in. I'd suggest you look at bobtheoilguy.com and see if you can get any info on it.

Check the oil filter housing and the filter itself and make sure that it isn't covered with oil, maybe during some work a tool may have hit it and cracked it or something of the nature.

 

Thank you csmeance! I have posted on bobistheoilguy.com.

Good luck duckengine! Please let us know what happens.

 

Anything visible? If your losing oil that fast it must be coming out of somewhere. There are other factors too but by the sound of it sounds like your losing oil on a daily basis. Whats the time frame before you have to load up again?

 

No, you'll be fine. Just Google "synthetic vs dino" or "synthetic oil myths".

 

I had this same issue on my Altima. Most likely the same scenario. Have you replaced the cat lately? On my altima the cat actually started to come apart and pieces got sucked up inside the engine and caused damage to the cylinders, etc....

long story short, engine had to be replaced....