New Owner Question

[simplesimon]

Hi All

I'm new to MR2 Roadster ownership and am so far very happy, but there is one little fly in the ointment.

My car is a 2004 model.

I have noticed my car uses oil.

Not a huge amount, but just enough to have me concerned.

My day to day drive is a 20 mile round trip, and over about 800 miles, I'm using probably just over a quarter of a litre.

I've owned cars that use much more but my worry is this.

If I do a longer motorway trip, at a steady 60-70mph that consumption increases dramatically to about the same over 100 miles.

I phoned my dealer today and got some technical advice.

It seems that Toyota did recognise a problem and extended the warranty.

The main problem apparently, is using the wrong oil.

As cars get older, there is less concern about what goes in there, and eventually they end up in some local garage having cheap 10W-40 put in, which apparently is the kiss of death.

My understanding is that if an oil that is too thick is used, it struggles through oilways and causes lubrication issues.

Well actually it was a lot more technical than that, including talk of oil grades and oval shape bores, but that was my basic understanding.

I'm interested to know how much oil other people's cars are using.

There is no smoke with mine, and no leaks.

The car runs perfectly in every other respect, especially with fuel consumption which I think is amazing.

As I said, day to day it's acceptable, but a bit scary on a motorway trip.

Why should steady motorway driving increase oil consumption ?

Hope I don't have to carry oil around with me every time I go away in it.

[ormi]

your car is out of the toyota extended warranty but in general these engines do burn oil toyota spec 1,lrt per 1000 miles any more and it req a new short block...

also the fault is down to the engine not what oil is used it suffers from oval boar ive rebuilt more of these than i care to remember..

[GIDDLEPIN]

Ormi is right in his answer, yes the Toyota maximum consumption is 1 litre per 1000 miles but to be honest by this amount of usage the engine is probably toast, yes you can put copious amounts of oil in and as long as you keep the level on the dip stick above minimum it will run for quite some time, but while doing this it is destroying you cats, you may have read the horror stories of “Pre-cats” destroying engines, this is not the case as excess amounts of oil or fuel passing into the system cause the catalytic material to overheat causing them to break up, this is also the way your main cat will go.

Pre-facelift Roadsters were more prone to this because of a design fault in the pistons causing the oil control drain holes to block up due to gumming, once this occurs effective lubrication of the cylinders is lost and as a result bore wear takes place (oval bore syndrome). This problem was addressed with the redesigned pistons which allowed for more efficient oil control.The facelift version came out in 2003 and some engines with the redesigned pistons were fitted in 2002 models so this means your car will have the latest pistons in.

As for using oil, I have had my 52 plate now for eight years and the mileage is just coming up to 92,000, and I have regularly put in just short of 4 litres of oil...........every service ;) the only time it needs oil again is the next service, this isn’t a one off rare event, I know plenty of other Roadster owners who don’t use oil, this doesn’t mean we don’t check the levels as often, if anything I check mine too much which is never a bad thing.

Unless you know the previous history of the car bought it is very difficult to say what a specific problem can be, if the wrong oil has been used, if the previous owner let the oil level drop below minimum, if they thrashed the car from cold or any number of things, the final outcome can sometimes be very expensive.

I don’t know if you bought your car from a dealer or privately but it does sound like the oil consumption problem you have will not improve and could eventually be rather expensive, I personally would be looking at some form of guarantee.

I’m sorry if this isn’t the news you wanted to hear but forewarned is forearmed .

Les