Celica 1.8 St Drinking Oil

[sotal]

I have a 1996 1.8 ST Celica which is great to drive, performs really well and is all round great fun!

But.... It seems to drink a fair bit of oil, I seem to be putting about a gallon in every 3 thousand miles.

I have seen cars before that have burnt oil, but you can normally see symptoms. I can't find any! I have no smoke coming out of the exhaust, the spark plugs look OK (a bit of white on them, which brushes off with a wire brush). The Oil looks fine in the engine (head gasket hasn't gone). The temp of the car seems fine never goes above half way.

That was the extent of my knowledge! I have also been told to try the following:

Accelerate hard up hills to see smoke (no smoke)

Use Engine breaking downhill to see smoke (no smoke)

Take the dipstick out whilst running the car, if it looks like a steam engine it's the valve seals? ( nothing comes out!)

Take the oil filler cap off and put your hand over and feel how much it blows up and covers your hand with oil. (I could feel a bit of air pushing up but not a lot and my hand did get some oil on it)

At the moment I don't mind sticking oil in all the time, but I'm just worried about whether it's doing any damage. I could only find one other post when searching (can't search for "oil" cus it's too small a word!) and that one had smoke coming out of the back. Any way sorry for the long post, but it's my first post and I wanted to make sure I included all the info from what I have tried already!

Thanks in advance for any help

Cheers

[daktari]

Firstly. Welcome to TOC

A gallon every 3k is a little excessive :(

1/ What sort of mileage has your celi got on her.

2/ Have you checked for leaks? Sounds obvious but theres a lot of hidden nooks and crannies. (Mine was back of the rocker cover)

3/ When doing the engine braking thing i find its best to take her up to high revs in say 3rd gear, then just back off the throttle completely for a few seconds then floor it again. Then check rear view mirror. (Best to do this on empty stretch of road) :P

[GT4 BOOSTER]

it wont blow smoke as the cat absorbs most of it , if its burning the oil your cat inside will be sooty black and will end up having to be replaced .it will most likely fail its next mot if its burning that much oil.if your plugs are white then thats normal , so dont suggest its being burnt at all. are you sure you have no leaks anywhere ?????

[Calisto]

Welcome to the club

[sotal]

Thanks for the welcomes! :)

Yeah I was told the Cat would get knackered if it was burning that much oil, but I don't fancy taking the exhaust apart to check!

I've checked as much as I can for oil leaks and nothing! I just can't figure out where it is going! They do make it a bit more akward to check for leaks with the undertray but I'm sure I would see a gallon of the stuff somewhere! I always park in the same place and there is no oil on the road, there is no oil on the undertray, and I don't get rainbow coloured water when I wash the underside of my car.

daktari - Yes I've tried that (3) , I've even had a friend drive behind to watch and nothing comes out, but if maleborn1967 is right the cat will be absorbing it. Although he then doesn't think it is burning cus of the spark plugs!

The car has done 104 thousand miles, I bought it with 90 thousand on the clock. The engine is very clean almost too clean if you know what I mean, it was the one thing I noticed when I purchased the car, espicially around the injectors, they almost look brand new

Thanks for the quick replies!

[daktari]

Whats the condition of the air filter? :)

[sotal]

Fine now, looks like new I was doing a full check of everything yesterday, pulled the air filter out and found an empty wotsit packet had gone up the pipe and was lying flat across the hole and blocking air flow,

could that be linked? I have removed it now (obviously :) )

I also removed a dead bird that was embedded into the radiator (and starting to smell!)

Just out of interest is my celica a gen6? 96 P plate.

[GT4 BOOSTER]

yes gen 6 from 93 upto 99

the blocked air pipe would lead to a rich mixture and make the plugs black , cant see it using oil . what sort of bird was it ? :D

[sotal]

The spark plugs where white though!

No idea what sort of bird it had already cooked! It wasn't very big though but I now have a golf ball sized squahed in dent in the rad. To be honest I am only guessing it was a bird by th fact that I found 2 feathers elsewhere on the rad, other than that it was that far gone it could have been anything (with fluff and a bit of flesh!)

Just to mention as well the fuel consumption seems normal 35-40mpg if I drive it normally 30-35 when I get a chance to go a bit faster!

[GT4 BOOSTER]

check these breathers are clear on top of the rocker cover . just a hunch :!Removed!:

[sotal]

check these breathers are clear on top of the rocker cover

What breathers? and whats your reasoning behind your hunch!? ;)

Does anybody have any idea where the oil could be going? As far as I'm aware there are normally 4 ways:

Burning and going out as fumes - Should see oily spark plugs and maybe some smoke

Leaking out - should find oil somewhere

Head Gasket Gone - Temp will be high, car wont perform, white sludge in oil

Turbo gone, so liquid oil comes out of exhaust - I ain't got a turbo!

I haven't got any of those symptoms so I am confused. I saw a trick to check the diagnostics on another part of this forum. You have to short two pins then watch how many times the engine light flashes. Does this work for my car? Does anyone have any info about it?

[edit] ok i see your pic now - my engine is the 1.8 and looks completely different [/edit]

[GT4 BOOSTER]

...

[GT4 BOOSTER]

if the engine management light isnt on , there's no reason for diagnostics.

[sotal]

err ok, where is the breather pipe on that pic (it looks the same now!) and what do I check with it?

Cheers and sorry if I sound dumb!

[GT4 BOOSTER]

see the pipe on the top of the rocker cover right hand side , near the bracket with 2 bolts on it . just see if its blocked up with black hard oily crap.

[sotal]

OK is it this one:

Is it OK just to pull it off and have a look in it? Also what does it mean if it is full of black oily crap? Do I just clean it out or is it a symptom of another problem? Also does it indicate where the oil is going?

Cheers

and whilst I'm at it with pics here is the offending vehicle! :)

Well I'm just off for my lunch so is there anything I should try on the car whilst I'm with it? Will try to take some pics as well under the bonnet

[GT4 BOOSTER]

yeah just take it off and clean it out , its just a breather pipe , but if they get blocked it can lead to engine pressure and possibly oil loss. its normal for these pipes to block now and again.

[sotal]

oops, when I got home and looked I realised it's not the same as the pic you posted!

Is it the pipe directly above the A of 7A-FE

[daktari]

Best probably to check them all.

[sotal]

Best probably to check them all.   

I'm not that good! I daren't just pull pipes off without knowing whats in them! can you point out which ones I should pull off and inspect??

Cheers

[sotal]

Well just found a similar problem on another site:

http://www.6gc.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=16812

Sounds like lots of people have the same problem with no symptoms!

According to them the options are:

Pay to have new valve seals fitted: £800

Fit Valve Seals yourself: £??? (needs new gaskets etc) Maybe £200ish

Keep topping up the oil, then when it dies replace the engine with another for about £400

I will try cleaning some pipes out - it would be useful to know which ones can just be pulled off and inspected. I just can't believe it can burn oil and not leave any symptoms!

[GT4 BOOSTER]

yeah just check em all , they are only breather pipes , nothing will fall or break .just unclip em .

is that the original engine , thats a carina engine. 115 bhp tops . mine is 173 bhp .

is yours a uk car or an import ?

most of the guys on that site are yanks , so the 800 would be dollars , valve stem oil seals usually puff out loads of smoke on the first start up .cos the oil runs down them overnight not a fortune to have done at all , as it can be done with the head in situ and no head gasket need be replaced.

[sotal]

As far as I know it's the original engine, all codes match up etc, and all celica 1.8ST's are listed as having a 7AFE engine so it should be the right engine!

It's listed as 118BHP and is a standard UK model

Anyway breather pipes, I'm still not sure which ones are actually breather pipes! How many are there? Is it just the two pipes between the lump with 7AFE written on it and the alloy block at the back with the air intake going into it?

What exactly is the model of your celica?

[GT4 BOOSTER]

yes just those 2 pipes , they should be supple when you squeeze them and not hard.here's my celica 1995 st202 173 bhp

[sotal]

I gave them a squeeze earlier and they felt supple (not solid anyway) I will have a look later.

Is yours a 2litre?

I had to go for the lowest model for insurance! :( still goes plenty for me though I have a Yamaha YZF600R if I want to accelerate from 0-60 in 3.5 seconds! I drive to and from work everyday 7 miles each way solid traffic from door to door, so it's not very often I get to exercise the car!

Can suggest anything else that's worth looking at> I just don't want to believe it is the valve seals as there is no evidence of it! Are you a mechanic? (you seem to know what you are talking about!)

Anyway any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers