ikata

This is soo bizarre... I was stuck in traffic today for about 1h most of it inching slowly in gear; no AC, pretty cool outside. Towards the end I started noticing some burning oil smell. Of course I am thikning "not my car"! A few minutes later I park the car and look at the exhaust and to my surprise the car was burning oil like hell - thick, stinky, bluish smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe. No coolant in the oil, no oil in the radiator. Clearly not coolant or headgasket related (or it seems so).

I come back two hours later, start the car and no indication of the problem whatsoever. The car did and still drives fine. It did not and hasn't overheated. Water pump changed about 20K miles ago. I use 5W30 synthetic and burn about 1qt every 3K miles which is typical for the miles and age of the car. Oil consumption has not increased as far as I can tell in the 150 or so miles I drove today since this happened in the morning. Can't think of what else might be relevant. Anybody have an idea what is going on???

Thanks!
N.

 

bigdad

this is pretty typical of worn/leaking valve stem seals....long periods of idle or near idle conditions and oil collects on the stems and runs down and gets burned. At higher rpm the oil pressure is higher and get flung off of things like moving parts more and drains back at the drain holes. You might also find that you will get blue smoke at start up that goes away fairly quickly....you can't justify doing any mechanical work to replace the seals economically, but you can try one of the new high mileage type oils like Valvolines Maxlife...they use seal conditioners that swell them up a bit and tighten up....I found it to help a bit in one of my cars and a friend who had recommended it to me said his 16 Yr old Celica went from blue smoke most of the time to practically none......

ikata

Thanks bigdad!!!

Your explanation is consistent with the symptoms I observed today. Better yet, I like it because it gives me hope that I am not faced with another expensive repair.

I drove the car some more today and as long as the car is moving or for some time after it stops there's no problems. I did get the problem to come back after I let it idle for about 15min. I must have pushed it over the edge this morning thought because I have left the car idling before for long periods of time without this ever happening. Am I hurting anything when the oil is burning (other than potentially getting low)? How long can I go like this before I need to do something about it? I drive mostly long-distance so hopefully this won't happen too often.

Thanks for the MaxLife advice. I hate to switch from Mobil1 but I'll do it if it helps the car.

Thanks again!
N.

Jetdoc

I have read where a clogged PCV valve can cause excessive smoking. It's a cheap part and easy to replace.

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People are often reluctant to pay for good advice but rarely follow free advice.

Mike Diaz

Definitely check the PCV valve, it's located on top of the driver side valve cover.

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