Thread: Oil consumtion issues

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You should be able to do a little Sherlock Holmes to figure out what is going on. That much oil is either (1) leaking, (2) being sucked into the ports and being burned or (3) Exxon is stealing oil from you at night.

Leaks are easy to spot at that high of a volume. Pour a quart of oil in one spot every 100 miles and you have a major mess....seems like you have eyeballed the thing....have you crawled underneath an looked up? Do so before you eliminate leaks.

Regarding #2, pull the plugs and look at them. If you are burning a quart per 100 miles, you should see some plug discoloration. One common leak on a small block Chevy occurs when people put RTV on their intake gaskets and the lower side slips down when the manifold is torqued. This leaves an open path from the valley into the intake port or ports. Sucks oil big time.

As for #3, if you see any guys in a tank truck hanging around your neighborhood.......

if you do see oil on your frame or anything, buy an oil dye kit and use a black light to find the leak, makes it a whole lot easier, specially if you have a garage you can fit the car in to block out some of the light.....

if its burning it, you should be able to smell some oil with that high of consumption.... but run a compression check, if you get low numbers then you should run a leakage check on each cylinder with a low number to isolate weater you've got bad rings or not..... once thats eliminated... go ahead and pull the intake manifold..... trying to give this in an order that will keep you from pulling things apart without need