My 2004 Acura Tl is consuming oil more than it should be and its starting to worry me. I am 17 years old and have it has a new timing belt new clutch and flywheel new head gasket intake exhaust and pistons were redone because they were slightly off. Other than that it runs like a champ. It has 139,000 miles on it and before this an older lady had it so she was babying it the whole time. Anyone have any ideas as to why my oil is being used up so fast?

 

Are the precats original? You may be a victim of precat failure.

 

that is a possibility is that expensive to fix

 

The motor was rebuilt and now you're experiencing oil consumption?

What's the rate of consumption per 1000 miles?

 

I didn't know that causes a car to burn oil. How does it work?




Yes, how much oil are you burning?

 

Bearcat - With the J series having the cats bolted right to the head, when you turn the car off if there's particles inside a burned out pre cat those can be sucked into the engine. From that point they ruin the cylinder walls. Could cause burning oil, or simply kill the engine.

There's enough byproducts in our gas to take away half the life of a PC.

Plus think about the heat you're holding inside the engine with this design. You could also fail from this. It's one thing bringing air into your engine, but that's useless if the flow is restricted leaving.

Ideally you would relocate the pre cats or just delete them.

If this is a rebuilt engine and they never looked at the precat, it could keep happening.

 

nick1acura04,

We need some more info before we can help you.

You said the engine was rebuilt (new head gasket and pistons). Why did your engine need this work? What was wrong before this to cause this repair?

Who did the engine work? An Acura dealership or independent shop ?

How long ago (time wise and mileage) was the engine work done before you noticed the oil consumption?

 

I hope he didn't just run off and buy new Cats. :/

 

So do I, because it's only a possibility. But if you have no idea what the problem is, then why post? Even mechanics don't pin point a problem instantly.

This is where I read about the cats since everyone thinks I'm nuts.
http://www..net/forums/7g-performanc...e-vs-hfpc.html

 

Here is some more info we didn't really rebuild the engineering what happened was my exhaust smoke was really white and smelled kinda funky and the independent ship that does all my work Loren Kreider automotive (very good with cars) said its probably my head gasket so we took the engine apart and found that it was the head gasket and we replaced it. We also noticed the heads were outbid line my 1800 of something not quite sure the size but yea that's all that we did besides the other modifications I don't plan on really doing engine work until I get a new engine for my car BC of the miles it has on it and we did the new head gasket things around 123,000 miles

 

The oils consumption started probably around 130,000 miles

 

Your answers are raising more questions.

Why did the engine start having "really white smoke"?

Did you overheat the engine and that is what caused the "really white smoke"?

Is your transmission an automatic or a manual? If it is a manual, did you miss a shift and over rev the engine?

We can not help you if you are not forthcoming with the real root cause.

 

"," and "," are your friends. In your last post you had a single period and it was in the middle and not even one at the end. The only comma was used for the mileage.

From what I gather from your post, you had a blown head gasket and it was replaced. More than likely there is other damage somewhere that was missed. Did they check to verify coolant did not make it into the oil?

 

He is probably posting from a smart device that is auto-correcting for him.

As Inacc says, give a timeline and actions that got you to this point.

Blown head gasket and warped misaligned head/deck is very telling.

If you are getting a replacement engine, why worry about it?

 

Seriously lol.
Ah nevermind.
Replacing the pistons as stated in your first post requires engine removal and is part of the rebuild process. Maybe by pistons, you meant valves?

If you had a blown headgasket, it may have been "burning" coolant which was causing the white smoke or steam that probably had a sweet smell.

What kind of oil?

As the others asked, how much does it burn?

Did an overheat cause the blown headgasket?

How many times have you had to fill it during an oil change interval and do you always check it with the car in the same spot?

Have you ever replaced the PCV valve?

Do you have a CAI or anything else that might plug off the fresh air inlet to the crank case?

Does it smoke at all and if it does smoke, is it at startup, full throttle, or under deceleration?

Any leaks?

 

This might be irrelevant and not to lead anyone down the wrong rabbit hole, but I once owned a prelude with high miles on it, used mobil 1 and it burned about half a quart to 3/4 of oil a month, less then 1k. The previous owner always used mobil 1, don't know if that was the truth, but I switch oils to valvoline high mileage synthetic blend and burned a 1/2 quart of oil every 6k.

Nothing was wrong with the engine, new timing belt, valve adjustment, timing was on point...etc but burned a lot of oil till I switched.

 

That can definitely happen. You want to look at the NOACK value, viscosity, and to a lesser value, the HTHS. Low NOACK will usually slow down the oil burning especially if it's getting past the rings and through the PCV system.

 

Yes since the headgasket was messed up it was burning coolant. Also I use Royal Purple synthetic oil. SAE 5w-20 High Performance Motor Oil. Between oil changes i have put sometimes 4 pints into it to keep it at the correct level and no the white smoke does not occur now at all because i got the new head gasket.I did not replace the PVC valve.

 

110,000 - New Timing Belt, New Stage 3 Clutch and Flywheel
120,000 - White Smoke - New Head Gasket
- Heads were shaved
132,000 - Begins to take lots of oil between oil changes

 

For right now, get rid of the RP and use Redline 5w-30. Depending on where the oil is going, it can significantly slow or stop the oil consumption. I'll elaborate tomorrow.

 

KN_TL : What is the blue tube in your avatar picture?

 

Inlet to the compressor.

 

it connects to his snail.

 

i honestly dont know what that is could you elaborate?

 

Its the air pipe between the filter and the turbo.

 

^ an inlet to his turbo

guess IHC beat me to it

 

All above statements are true.

 

where in the heck is your battery at

 

in the trunk.

 

ok cant tell if your being sarcastic or not haha but anyway it says to use 5w-20 on my car so should I still use redline 5w-30 and where can i get it bc Advanced Auto doesnt have it

 

I hear Amazon has good prices.

 

Did you over heat the engine? Why were the heads warped?

 

He speaks the truth.

 

I havent overheated the engine but when the headgasket was f'ed up the heads were a little bit warped and they had to get shaved

 

Two warped heads means the engine was overheated. Warped heads allow the headgaskets to blow. If only one head was slightly warped, maybe, just maybe it wasn't oveheating but with both warped, the engine was overheated.

Did they say how many thousandths they were warped? Sometimes they will just touch the heads to put a nice surface for the gasket to grab onto, sometimes metal has to be removed due to warping.

 

has anyone ever heard of switching to Synthetic oil causes more harm than good? By all means; NOT necessarily a true statement. For example: "nick1" is not the original owner, might not have previous records, and though the Previous owner was an "old lady and babied it" ; he doesn't know for sure if she even followed maintenance schedules. Anything could cause a car to over heat sure,especially our already prone TL's but that's a strike regardless. Now for my theory: for example; if he bought the TL with 100k and for those 100k the TL's oil was changed with lets say Castrol GTX; with no problems. Now, he purchased the vehicle and hears good things about Synthetic;keeping the motor clean,smoother revs and so on; hell why not, let's switch it. So he puts in Synthetic. The synthetic oil does its job, cleans . All the gunked up oil and sludge that has been keeping compression and the seals and rings intact; is now gone. Mayyybe; quite possibly; causing a burning of oil? I wonder if a simple test of using 10W-30 synthetic could slow down consumption.

 

A synthetic by nature doesn't necessarily clean better than a dino oil. Many times it has a superior additive package that may clean better but not always. What a synthetic offers is a product that leaves less of itself behind (sludge). So if you run it from day one, the engine stays clean. If you throw it into an already sludged up engine, it might clean but it might not.

Sludge and carbon buildup in the ring land area does not keep compression up. It makes the rings stick and you lose compression.

As for the seals, it's debatable but it's possible having a bunch of crap around them could possibly help seal everything up.

The myths about synthetics hurting seals and not being able to be mixed with dino oils comes from the 70s when that was actually true. None of this has been true since the '80s. Other than factory fill, my car has only had two different oils in it since new. Amsoil ACD straight 30wt and Redline 5w-30 which technically is a straight 30wt. Mine looks like you dumped clean oil on a brand new engine inside. Usually by this point you have at least some discolorations on the rocker arms or some of the aluminum of the head. ACD just happens to be a grp IV syn with a ton of detergents and Redline is a grp V ester so it naturally cleans and it has detergents.

This is where a true synthetic shines, especially an ester. It would be nearly impossible to experience sludge from overheating or extremely long change intervals. The add pack may get deminished and the oil may be extremely dirty but the only "sludge" would be from the combustion byproducts, not the oil itself.

One thing to remember is most oils marketed as "fully synthetic" are at best a synthetic blend. Very few true grp IV and V syns out there.

 

I'm way late to this thread, and I'd like to interject a question. I have an 04 Toyota MR-2 and those cars (2000-2005 MY production run) were notorious for having precat failure (crumbling of the ceramic matrix of the precat with the resultant dust getting sucked back into the engine causing scoring of the cylinder walls, increased oil consumption, and failed engines (to avoid it, I replaced my exhaust header- still has the main cat). Is this something to be more concerned about with the TL engine? This is the first I've read about this.

 

It adds maybe 1 - 2 hp max if any

 

"I hate cars" - thanks for the correction about the "myth" as I heard it from an older guy as well; lol. So that explains that it hasn't been true since 80's..also technology should advance so that engines can put up with harsher conditions. I wonder if maybe since the engine was rebuilt; maybe some numbers are out of Spec(clearances and such). I'm not sure how or why the rebuild was performed on the OP's car(he said pistons?) Anyways-thanks!