would an oil separator w/ drain back to engine help
would an oil separator w/ drain back to engine help
sachilles wrote: Have you examined the head gasket area's on the underside of the motor. also look on the front for the cam seals. While they certainly can burn oil, I'm betting you have a contributing leak. If you are burning that much oil, downstream will be issues. Any check engine light?
I thought that it should have been spitting something out of the CEL, but no, nothing. That should be playing Mary Hobb with the O2 sensors, shouldn't it?
I'll check all the gaskets after work, will let you know. Again, no drips or puddles yet.
The rings are stuck.
You can try decarbonizing treatments (we do the Run-Rite process here, with often remarkable results, like a P71 that burned a quart in 200 went to no oil consumption in 3000) but the rings in that little motor are so thin and weak that the end fix might involve popping the pistons out and soaking them in Berryman's for a few days each. Then they'll be spotless and oil consumption will drop to nothing.
That's what I had to do to the one I had in last week that consumed all of its oil and starved the bearings. Oops.
In reply to Knurled:
This is my fear. At that point I'd just do a rebuild for the $500 the parts cost. I have never heard of Run-Rite, so I'll look that up.
Egghead Racer wrote: In reply to Sonic: Ok, that's option 7... But I happen to love my Outback...
Then engine swap it to an engine that doesn't consume its own lifeblood....
Sounds like a perfect candidate for the seafoam in the intake treatment, and maybe an oil catch can on the pcv system.
WOW Really Paul? wrote: Then engine swap it to an engine that doesn't consume its own lifeblood....
I think the poor thing was just abused....
Build a forged internal tirbo motor? Two birds, one boulder.
If you try seafoam, do the "chinese water torture" google it, it actually works miracles, no gimmicks. Hell just plain water would probably do it.
I'd run two cans of NAPA carb cleaner through the engine, if I didn't have access to the equipment I have here. Hot engine, 1500ish RPM, just enough flow to keep it from misfiring but still fogging the sucker. Yes this will take two people due to the drive by wire.
Run-Rite is basically the same thing but with a more aggressive chemical and an apparatus to inject it. There is also an oil additive and a fuel additive, somewhat more aggressive than normal additives you can buy over the counter.
In reply to Knurled:
Have you done a borescope before and after? Id be interested...ive seen borescopes with seafoam only through the intake and it was really disappointing. Ive seen the pistons before and after i did the chinese water torture and would swear they looked brand new...on a 130k mile 23 year old motor.
Nah, we don't go for that, we only look at results. Generally speaking, oil consumption drops by at least half, usually a lot more.
Okay reason i ask is years ago i worked for a place that did the "drip" dont remember the brand but it wasnt cheap. And it was crap. Granted no one ever came in for it to cure oil consumption problems just got it done because someone upsold them on it and i was the monkey who did the service.
Clearing the air, im not saying yours is crap at all, i was just curious about your results. Duly noted.
We sell it both ways, as an aid for oilburning engines and as preventative maintenance. I firmly believe that it should be done every 15k on direct injected engines.
From what I have seen, modern engines that burn a lot of oil do so because the rings are stuck. Low tension rings get gunked easily, start to pass oil, which makes them gunk harder, and pretty soon the rings are damned near stuck and the oil return ports in the oil ring groove are plugged.
When I was at Saturn it was not uncommon to have to rering engines at 90k. Thing is, you'd pull the engine apart and it wasn't worn out. The bores weren't worn and the rings weren't worn, they were just stuck. New rings were installed as a matter of course but IMO you could just clean everything up and slam it back together and it would stop burning oil.
Or you could do a decarbonizing like a Run-Rite. It solved the oil consumption problems on every Saturn 1.9 that we've tried it on. Your descriptions sounds like the old system but there is technique involved, you need to meter the flow so the engine is just barely not misfiring. You know an engine needed it bad when the exhaust is a billowing opaque cloud of blue smoke during the procedure. That's oil carbon leaving the engine 
But you kinda need to babysit it for 20-30 minutes, which doesn't work so well in a churn-n-burn quick lube place.
I have learned a great deal from this thread. Thanks, all!
I have no idea where this oil could be going. I climbed up under the car yesterday, and noticed what I would consider a normal amount of gunk from an engine that's likely never been cleaned. I'll get to that, I promise.
The driver's side valve cover was a little wet, small leak, but nothing serious. At the rear of the engine either the rear main (do these have a rear main?) or the upper section of the oil pan is wet, and the transmission is a bit coated, but it doesn't seem like anywhere near enough to make that much of a dent in the oil level. Maybe I'm wrong about that?
However, if I were burning THAT much oil, don't you think I'd have some indication? That mother should be smoking, and it's not any more than normal. So weird...
I ran out of daylight, unfortunately. I wanted to give the areas as good a cleaning as I could and check it again after a few days, but that'll have to wait for the weekend.
So I'm looking back through those pictures I took, which I would share if I weren't on the 10% Internet work 'net. There's pretty fresh looking oil forming drips on the trans. So whatever is happening, it's not leaking a lot while the car is sitting. If it's throwing oil out while the engine is running, but not while it's parked, it could be something like the rear main or the rear of the head gasket, and not the rings, right? That's my thought, anyway. If there is no fouling of the plugs, this could all end up being a gasket/seal issue, which would be better. Right now I'm thinking head gasket due to the one instance of long puff of white smoke, but not a constant stream of white smoke out the back whilst driving.
Thanks knurled, you raised a point i hadnt realized. The honda tsb is to re ring as well, i bet those mothers are just stuck!
Egghead racer, perhaps you or someone you know could follow behind you while you give her a few deep jabs of the throttle? You could also pop off the intake tube and look behind the throttle body for a wet oily intake manifold as an indicator of it sucking up oil vapors but i have a feeling you and i are in the same boat with the stuck rings like Mr. Knurled stated. Expecially for that kind of consumption.
Edit cause you posed 1 min before i did, it could be the headgaskets? I know some subarus loved eating them but thats all i know about them. But fyi white smoke means water is burning, blue means oil, black is fuel. Many times blue smoke looks white but a good ole whiff of the smoke will let you know for sure. Disclaimer: from a distance, please dont huff exhaust fumes and blame me for your untimely demise!
In reply to chiodos:
Hah!!
It was definitely oil smoke. I call gas smoke black, oil/coolant white. Coolant level is ok, and hasn't changed. I've check both the rad and reservoir. Oil level has definitely changed...
My subaru tech buddy got back to me, says it might be as simple as the oil pressure switch at the front of the engine, know to leak gobs of oil. Mine happens to be caked in burned oil gunk. That would be a nice situation!
Egghead Racer wrote:WOW Really Paul? wrote: Then engine swap it to an engine that doesn't consume its own lifeblood....I think the poor thing was just abused....
Considering it's a recent years SoA product, I wouldn't even go out on a limb with that one....
Ok, so I dug into the engine a bit this weekend, and here's an update for anyone following along. Also, I'd like your opinion on what I've found.
I started by replacing the PCV and the oil pressure switch that had mucked up the front driver's side with oil. These two things were obvious to do, and cheap. I'm not sure the PCV was bad, but the oil switch definitely was. So there's one things down.
Then I decided to check all the plugs, to look for fouling as something to point me towards the rings or not. All the plugs themselves were fine, no fouling, nice and white. However, 3 out of 4 of them had oil in the tubes. Two of them had what I would consider a lot of oil in the tubes. I'm thinking I may have found the source of my oil loss. I mean, the spark plug socked was covered in oil. The location could also explain the oil on the trans, if it were to be dripping down as the tubes filled up and running down the engine.
Do you all thing the valve cover gaskets and the spark plug tube gaskets going bad like this could explain the heavy oil loss? I think the rings are fine. The rear main may be bad, but that seems unlikely.
I may also be burning just the smallest amount of coolant somewhere. So yay for that...
Yes. They could easily cause you to loose oil at that rate.
Those gaskets could definitely cause some noticeable amount of oil loss. I'd change them and see where that gets you. If the sensor and gasket gets it to under a quart in 3000 miles, I'd consider it to be in the realm of "don't worry about it."
Thanks, gents. Kit is on order, so I'll do a massive fun time tear down this weekend.
I should mention that there was not noticeable wet oil build up on the throttle body or anywhere in the airbox region, so oil in the intake doesn't seem to be an issue.
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