We are in luck! M'ladies Forester has been eating oil at the pace of 2.5 quarts every three weeks. The two subaru dealers in the area have said nothings wrong and it's normal. SOA said I could pay for any kind of repairs I recommend. Finally there is some justice. Maybe they can finally admit to crappy/faulty tunes on the last two generations of WRX/STI.
http://jalopnik.com/subaru-settles-lawsuit-over-oil-burning-cars-1752805682
How many miles does it see in that time?
My 09 WRX with 120k miles hardly burns any at all. Occasionally I'll put in 1/2 a quart if I go long between oil changes (I usually do 5k changes). No more than any other car I've had though.
How'd I know irish was going to pipe in with information unrelated to the FB2x? :)
Kenny - the Forester sees about 600 miles a month. So less than 500 miles and it's burning 2.5 quarts give or take a few tenths. We have had quite a few issues with the Foz. The main issues being the oil consumption and CVT going into limp mode on longer trips. SWMBO loves the car I can't wait for the lease to be up. The dealers have been a nightmare and it's the second time I've owned a Subaru where SOA refuses to fix the issue until now; where, it took a class action law suit to get things fixed.
I read here, are maybe somewhere else that it is thought that high oil consumption rates are related to using just synthetic oil in newer close tolerance engines. The theory is that the lack of friction is allowing the rings to glaze and leak by.
The thought is to use regular oil every few changes to allow the rings to wear in. I don't know if this is true or not but may be worth a try.
Every Subaru I have seen leaks oil at a far greater rate than burning it. Could this be your problem too.
A friend of mine has a pretty new one that uses a liter or so in 1000 km. Subaru says its fine. He says its going back as soon as the lease is up.
In reply to DirtyBird222:
Holy E36 M3 that's bad, that's ruin the catalytic converters bad.
Kenny_McCormic wrote: In reply to DirtyBird222: Holy E36 M3 that's bad, that's ruin the catalytic converters bad.
I would not be surprised to see that Subaru will have to recall these cars just because of this issue. It takes about 6 qts of oil to age the catalyst to roughly 150k miles. After that, they will degrade very fast.
pjbgravely wrote: I read here, are maybe somewhere else that it is thought that high oil consumption rates are related to using just synthetic oil in newer close tolerance engines. The theory is that the lack of friction is allowing the rings to glaze and leak by. The thought is to use regular oil every few changes to allow the rings to wear in. I don't know if this is true or not but may be worth a try. Every Subaru I have seen leaks oil at a far greater rate than burning it. Could this be your problem too.
OEM's learned how to "break in" engines back in the 90's while they were being manufactured. If Subaru isn't doing that, well....
I think a Subie is quite lower on my list after reading all this stuff.
92dxman wrote:
Ditto here, I want to love them, but instead I want nothing to do with them.
The Forester we got rid of last year burned a quart of oil every 2k miles from new for the entire 130k miles we owned it. I only drove it once in awhile but I put oil in it every time I filled it up for almost 5 years. It was an 09, so before the suit.
That plus cvt only is why the wife is driving a Rav4 now. Doesn't hurt that the Toyota gets 20% better gas mileage too.
A co-worker just got a new engine in his Imprezza. The dealer kept on telling him it was normal for the car to go through so much oil.
DirtyBird222 wrote: How'd I know irish was going to pipe in with information unrelated to the FB2x? :) Kenny - the Forester sees about 600 miles a month. So less than 500 miles and it's burning 2.5 quarts give or take a few tenths. We have had quite a few issues with the Foz. The main issues being the oil consumption and CVT going into limp mode on longer trips. SWMBO loves the car I can't wait for the lease to be up. The dealers have been a nightmare and it's the second time I've owned a Subaru where SOA refuses to fix the issue until now; where, it took a class action law suit to get things fixed.
I didn't read your link ... did they actually fix your particular car ? or is this just something you can wave in their face and maybe they'll get around to helping you
this isn't a sarcastic post ... I A) didn't read the link and B) am actually curious as to whether you've been taken care of
in the owners manual, what is interval for checking the oil? every 1k? Could you run it dry in that many miles? Grenading the engine while following owners manual procedures seems to be the easy way to get it covered under warranty.
Between things like this, poor mileage, and head gaskets, Subies have made the list of cars that are fun to drive that I will not own. I know many people never have an issue with them...but the incident rate seems way too high for my comfort level. MINI's are the other car on the list currently, because I owned one.
GL getting yours dealt with - that is an insane consumption rate. My 225k mile Explorer doesn't come close to that.
When did it start? My wife has a shiny new 2015 that at 10k mi does not burn a drop but I suppose I'd like to keep an eye out for it if it's a common problem.
ultraclyde wrote: Between things like this, poor mileage, and head gaskets, Subies have made the list of cars that are fun to drive that I will not own.
Yup. I desperately wanted a Forester XT, until my buddy at COBB started telling me all the horror stories.
The flat 4 Subie's I've worked on with over 125,000 ish miles had their oil control rings caked up a bit. I could see them starting to burn oil at some point.
The newest one's I've worked on are the '05-06 2.5L's and I found there are two different OEM piston sizes. The motors with the smaller "B" size pistons (especially with 2 or more "B" pistons) tent to go through oil like crazy. I think it's a .005 difference between the larger "A" piston and the smaller "B" piston. I've referring to them as A and B because that is how Subaru does it. It is stamped on the piston top AND on etched into the top of the block, just under the alternator.
At 170,000 miles, my Dad's Forester was one of these 2-2.5 qt oil burners.
I pulled the motor for some head gasket work and we decided to switch to the larger size pistons. We didn't bore or hone the cylinders and I reused the piston rings.
We bought all new Subaru OEM "A" size pistons and dropped them in... I caught all kinds of crap from self-proclaimed Subaru mechanics online. The car now has 245,000 and it only burns 1/2 quart every 4,000 miles in the winter only. In the summer he never adds anything, so figure that one out.
In reply to fornetti14:
Are you saying they use two different size pistons in the same engine? That seems just a little 1920s to me.
Before everyone chimes in with "my Subaru is great" or "two friends of mine one with a 2004 STI and one with a 2008 STI had their cars blow up" this particular incident affects the below cars.
According to Torque News, the affected FB engines are the 2.5-liter engines in the 2011-2014 Forester, 2013 Legacy and 2013 Outback and the 2.0-liter engines in the 2012-2013 Impreza and 2013 XV Crosstrek.
Toyman01 wrote: In reply to fornetti14: Are you saying they use two different size pistons in the same engine? That seems just a little 1920s to me.
Yes, right from the factory when new. I could never find any discrepancies in the bore dimensions, so maybe they used the coin toss method to decide which bore gets the big pistons.
Part numbers can be found online. I was baffled when I first read about it years ago.
Harvey wrote: Before everyone chimes in with "my Subaru is great" or "two friends of mine one with a 2004 STI and one with a 2008 STI had their cars blow up" this particular incident affects the below cars.According to Torque News, the affected FB engines are the 2.5-liter engines in the 2011-2014 Forester, 2013 Legacy and 2013 Outback and the 2.0-liter engines in the 2012-2013 Impreza and 2013 XV Crosstrek.
SoA is also fairly spotty on covering the ringland issue that plagues the 2.5L wrx/sti....it's like their warranty department runs out of coffee a lot or something. That's why one of our local Subie fanatics drives mazdas now.
In reply to pjbgravely: My Fiesta has had nothing but synthetic since day one and has never used a drop of oil between changes which are long.
Needs an Italian tune up. Years ago I new a man with a Ford who was having oil use problems. After being told it was normal he decided to see if he could blow the engine. After beating on the engine for many miles it stopped using oil and it didn't blow.
Toyman01 wrote: In reply to fornetti14: Are you saying they use two different size pistons in the same engine? That seems just a little 1920s to me.
As far as I know, A/B pistons and bores (to improve fit with less than perfect tolerances) was a thing well into the 90s. That's why mid-late 90s GM stuff had piston slap issues, they started loosening up the clearance so they could throw them together with no sorting to save money.
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