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All,
Now that I've got all of my oil leaks finally under control, I changed my oil for the first time in 7500 miles, and I only got out of the car 3.25 quarts of oil!
Is this normal???
The car has 217K miles on it and drives very well. I do not see any blue smoke coming out of the tail pipe, so I'm a little at a loss as to where the oil is going.
I will, moving forward, keep an eye more closely on the oil level. Probably on a monthly basis. At the next oil change I will check compression, though I believe it to be fine, and then perform a seafoam soak, and see how the oil consumption goes from there.
Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Matt
--
1989 - 245, 1990 - 245, 1991 - 245, and 1993 - 245
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You are pretty brave letting a car with that mileage go 7500 miles before checking (changing) the oil.
Subaru had NEW cars that almost ran dry before 7500 miles. They had to test each of a large run of cars after carefully filling them then checking them again after 1000 miles.. I know this because my son-in-law was the tech at his shop that had to re-ring them.. He even won an award for solving an issue with getting the timing chain tight after a rebuild.
BTW - find out how much oil is indicated between full and low - in my 745TI it was a quart and a half - I would add a quart, and the reading was low again sooner that I expected. This car had 250K and I made my girls check the oil and coolant every week, tire pressure too!
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Going to 10W30 is not a problem. And worth a shot.
With the "new" head, did you get new valve stem seals? They generally need replacing after 200K, the crankcase vacuum will suck up oil and allow it to be burned via the PCV.
The turbo will also begin to leak oil, no big deal unless it starts to kill mosquitos :)
I would also start changing the oil at 5,000 miles and continue to use synthetic. I like the Walmart 5 quart bottles.
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Keeping it running is better than buying new
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Matt so much depends on:
-- How the car was maintained before you bought it.
-- How hard you drive the car
-- Type of oil and viscosity used...
With 217K, it's going to use some oil.
I have driven a V70 and an V70 XC to with in 200K.
I used full synthetic and went to a 10-30 viscosity.
I usually checked oil levels weekly, especially after a long highway road trip.
You may not be too far off expected usage, after 7500 miles. I would check the oil weekly and monitor the consumption trend. Lets see what other site members
feel about oil consumption
I do note my wife's 2014 XC90 uses a little over 1/2 a quart in 7000 miles and has about 80 K miles on it.
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AFM,
wrote:
-- How the car was maintained before you bought it. UNKNOWN
-- How hard you drive the car. Wife drives it daily, but not hard. She does love the power though!
-- Type of oil and viscosity used... Currently using 5w-30, full synthetic as per manufacture recommendation.
What are the down sides from going to 10w-30??? Will I get the same kind of coverage and lubrication with that, or might I be putting the engine at risk?
Thoughts?
Matt
--
1989 - 245, 1990 - 245, 1991 - 245, and 1993 - 245
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Matt,
With 217K miles the normal engine wear has opened up clearances/tolerances in the engine. I think 10-30 would be a good choice, especially living in Md. and with weekly check to see if consumption is less.
I am not too sure about "flushing high mileage engines and what bag of worms that might open. (Klaus would have a handle on that issue).
Also, around 100K, I usually remember to install a magnetic drain plug and that provides an indication of metal wear (for type of oil being used) at oil changes.
Art
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Normal? I hope not.
You never gave a time line during which you effected your repairs.
Did checking the oil slip off your radar?
That'd be understandable if you had a succession of bigger fish to fry.
Just for giggles, perform a glove test. Stretch a thin rubber glove or balloon over the oil filler neck.
Start the engine and see if the glove pulls in (desirable) or blows outward (undesirable).
Since your's is turbocharged see if the oil return line is leaking at the point where it goes back into the block. There's a gasket in there which can fail.
Maybe any leaked oil would miss the exhaust resulting in no smell.
Go under the front half of the car and look for evidence of leaks.
What kind of oil do you use? If you live in a warmer climate maybe a 10W-30 could help.
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GeorgeandKira,
I purchased the car in February of 2018, with 197,813 miles on it with blown head from a failed water pump. Zero maintenance history with the car.
PO stated that he performed regular maintenance on the car which consisted of oil changes, and brake jobs when needed.
I replaced the head, put in a new PCV system this past summer as I removed the valve cover to finally repair my last engine oil leak. I've rebuilt the transfer case, flushed ALL the fluids, especially the AWD stuff both front and rear, got the AWD working again, what a PIA that was, and now I just finished it with new shocks and struts all around. Believe they had never been touched, and well, they looked like it too. The car runs so much better now.
I use 5w-30 full synthetic oil in the car as per the manufacture's recommendation.
I inspected everything underneath the car yesterday during the oil change and there are zero leaks coming from the engine or transmission. I do have a small seepage on the transfer case where the two halves of the case bolt together, but minor compared to the leak I had on the pinion seal which I just replaced as I originally installed the wrong one during the rebuild. Yes, I was dumbass!
As far as the climate is concerned, I live in Maryland, so not really too cold, and the first thing that did come to mind was can I change the oil to see if that helps? As stated in my post, I do want to perform compression test and then do a seafoam procedure on it before switching oil viscosity, but in the end that may be how I have to go to get the oil consumption down.
Thoughts?
Matt
--
1989 - 245, 1990 - 245, 1991 - 245, and 1993 - 245
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The "cast of characters" has been pretty well laid out; notation of engine wear, turbo wear, PCV system wear, valve seal wear and OK's given to use of a thicker oil.
The funny thing is that nobody ever has a suggestion on BRAND of oil when the "mysterious consumption" question comes up. All I can add there is that cheap oils, though proper, seem to vanish faster than good ones.
As they say, "A quart per 1,000 miles or less is OK". Heaven knows, that's of little comfort.
As purely anecdotally based suggestions I have good memories of Castrol 0W-30 and Mobil1 0W-40; both being the European Formula. My turbo experience was with Saabs and I didn't take notes.
However, every engine I've ever tended used some oil.
Your wife (or anybody else) "liking the power" might just translate into spirited driving!
All the Volvo and Saab owners who gripe online regarding tires lasting only 20,000 miles (where mine last 50K and more!) suggest they like the power too.
All you can do is cross the T's and dot the I's until you're satisfied. Satisfaction may go all the way up to an engine rebuild.
Maybe get a bore camera to see the cylinder walls' condition when you do your compression check?
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GeorgeandKira,
You bring up a good point on brand of oil. My first ever experience with oil back in 1983 when I first started driving. I owed a 77 VW bug, and all I ever used THEN was QuakerState! I continued to use that until I bought my first new car, a 1993 Saturn SC2. When I started oil changes on that car I switch to Castrol, and I continue to use to this day.
My wife likes that pick up of the car, but does not punch it, though I suspect she could which may lead to a premature death of my carrier sleeve that I had to replace during the transfer case rebuild. So far we have 20k on the tires that came with the car as they were brand new when the water pump wet the bed, and the tread looks great. I suspect we will get a good 40k out of them till I'll need to replace them.
Your suggestion of a bore scope is probably worth a look. It won't cost me anything and it won't hurt. I can do this both before and after I do the flush. I've done the flush before on my Saturn and 98' V70, so I'm not too worried if its going to kill it. The Saturn improved with the flush, the V70, not so much. Its rings were already shot at that point and there was nothing short of an engine rebuild that would fix its issue's, thus the reason I sold it.
As for now, I'll continue to monitor the consumption, and make notes where appropriate, and enjoy driving it while I still can.
Best regards,
Matt
--
1989 - 245, 1990 - 245, 1991 - 245, and 1993 - 245
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IMO that's fairly typical for a turboed Volvo that has skipped a couple oil changes and seen some trauma because of it at some point in its life, regardless of how many miles on the odometer.
By the time I sold my V70 2.4T @268K miles it was using a quart of oil every two tanks of gas (~800miles). Only perceptable when really honking on it, like a full-throttle, two-downshift passing move on the highway. Then you could produce a nice little cloud of blue smoke for the tailgater behind you. :-D
Glad to hear that you're out from underneath your XC and spending time behind the wheel!
-Will
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XC60 / Odyssey
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