2004 Chevrolet Malibu Maxx V6 LT, 176K miles
I know that most older cars burn oil and I"m not trying to be elitist, but how can I make it stop? My main concern is that I have to use the heat in the car and it will suck oil fumes right into the car.
Symptoms:
- whining/growling noise (not a belt) when going uphills or generally working hard
- ticking noise when idling or driving
- smells like burnt oil from outside the car
- oil gets really hot if you try and check it after 30-60 minutes of driving.
- temp gauge stays pretty much at center but it will move up 1/10 of MM if you drive for more than 1 hour
- burns about 1 quart of oil every 500-700 miles
- I don't have any oil leaks or any leaks that I know of
- car has low power on quick acceleration and on going up hills
I have a conventional/synthetic mix of oil in there now, it takes 4 quarts 5w30. (I have about 1.5 quarts 5w20 in there because that's all I had at the time to replenish it after it burned it) and I've ran 3 quarts of lacquer thinner mixed with gas about 2,500 miles ago. It did make an EGR code go away back then.
What I've tried:
Reading different things about PCV valve, vacuum pump, special oil additives like seafoam, and reseal products like ATP-205 reseal.
I currently put in 1 bottle of the walmart version of seafoam.
You could try a cleaner to help free up the piston rings (like the CR505 Scotty recommends) . But it's a high mileage engine so probably nothing you can do about it.
Your engine is likely just flat worn out. I'm guessing you haven't driven said car for the entire 20 years it's been since they first produced yours. You don't know for sure what was done to the engine. 90% of the wear happens when you start the car up first thing in the morning, and there's still the most substantial wear in subsequent restarts throughout the day. Frequent short trips will lessen the service life of the engine, there's no way around it. Every time you shut the car off, the oil pump shuts down, and all of the oil drains to the pan. It takes up to 5 seconds for the oil pump to completely restore proper oil pressure once restarted, and the piston rings farthest from the oil pump are last to be lubricated. In addition, the piston rings are also the last components to be lubricated, and are the first things to wear out as a consequence. The only thing keeping the pistons from metal-on-metal contact is the residual oil film leftover from the previous starting until that cylinder is properly lubricated again.
Perform a compression test, both wet and dry compression (oil is the medium for the wet compression test) no cylinder should be more than 20% off of the cylinder with the highest pressure.
Oil burning is usually caused by not changing the engine oil every 5,000 miles or once a year for naturally aspirated engines. Every 3,000 miles for turbo charged engines. The Car Care Nut recommends changing the oil every 6 months instead of 12 months.
Following the car manufacturer recommendations of 10,000 mile oil changes will almost certainly lead to oil burning. The service intervals car manufacturers recommend is designed to get the car through it's warranty period. Once the warranty expires and the car starts burning oil and the transmission starts slipping because the 'lifetime fluid' was never changed, they'll gladly sell you a new car.
Here's a 3D video on how the lubricant system of an engine works.
A video on how piston rings work.
Piston rings are supposed to spin and move freely inside the piston ring groove.
Car Care Nut talking about his experience working at the Toyota dealership and showing how 10,000 mile oil changes cause piston rings to seize up in the groove. (12:40 timestamp)
Royalty Auto showing what 10,000 mile oil changes did to a Land Rover with only 87,000 miles.
https://youtube.com/shorts/dXSHfN-nYiY
@oskool If you're using a PC you can share a YT video link starting at a specific time. Right-click on the video and select "copy video URL at current time". The video linked will start at that specific time.
For example: https://youtu.be/TJhFAwFv-O0?t=769 Perhaps you might find this tip useful.