abrahamtennyson

Hello everybody! I'm Abraham and I own a 2000 Honda Civic 4 door sedan and I have oil burning problems. I have observed,

Engine burns 1 quart for 500-600 kms sometimes even more (Car has 176k kms)
No leaks whatsoever underneath, rear seal or oil drips
No exhaust smoke (Checked myself letting my friend start it up (Cold Start) and give some gas)
Engine running as usual and gives 18km/litre gas mileage
When I bought the car three months ago, I found zero radiator fluid in the reservoir.
Engine caps and the radiator are perfectly normal (no white stuff)
Exhaust pipe is filled with carbon and easily noticeable.
Engine doesn't make any weird noise and runs so smooth.
Also after buying the car (three months ago) and when I changed the oil for the first time , it barely had one litre and I was heart broken.
No CEL

As a First step, I changed the PCV Valve but still burns oil as usual. Rarely, I'm able to smell the oil burn inside the cabin (occurred 4 times in the last 3 months)

I checked the compression on all the cylinders and it had 185-195 in all the cylinders. I'm so afraid if the oil control rings are bad and I really wanna save this engine since it has less mileage. I'm not sure if it has bad valve seals/shaky valves.

Also when I changed the spark plugs on the car, all 4 electrodes were white (not brown as in usual good engines), and the plug on cylinder 4 had white deposits over the electrode.


I would really appreciate if I have some insights on this.

Cheers,
Abraham

ezone

I'd expect stuck oil rings causing the consumption.

You may not notice smoke because it is behind you when it does smoke, and a working catalytic converter can hide a lot of smoke.

You now know it is consuming oil. That's not the end of the world, it can continue going for a long time like this as long as you stay ahead of the consumption rate.

Check oil level every time you fill up the gas tank and add oil when necessary, else you may grenade the engine in spectacular fashion. Check coolant level too and refill when needed.

For the cost of fixing the oil consumption, you can buy a whole lot of oil for that price.
But if it ever blows the head gasket, that would be the ideal time to open the rest of the engine to fix the consumption problem.
Speaking of head gasket, where did the coolant disappear to?

abrahamtennyson

Thanks for your reply ezone. I hope the car still runs the same way. I wasn't really into cars when I bought it, so I didn't really take a look into it but rather filled it in with new. But I assume it was all dried up or the previous owner used a lot of water so it might've been evaporated. However I would appreciate if you comment on my ideas:

1. If in case I have a valve seal/ shaky valve issue, I was planning to change the whole head of the car. Would that work?

2. Also for the stuck oil rings, can I try sea foam? I'm not sure if I can try something else to fix the issue.

EDIT: I just remembered. The car has a small exhaust leak in the resonator pipe and when I do a cold start in the winter, I was able to see violety rainbowish smoke with water on the place where the exhaust leak was. It would disappear after the car is in operating temperature. I dont know what that means too.

Thanks

ezone

Change it with what exactly?
Why not have yours rebuilt instead?

And while the head is removed to do either of the above, you can yank out all 4 of the pistons and replace the set of piston rings, you will get to fix those pesky stuck oil control rings that are the most likely source of your oil consumption.


You can try whatever you want, but don't hold your breath expecting miracles.

What oil type are you using now?
What oil had the car been using before you got it?



If it were me and I didn't have any other good reason to pull the head yet, I'd switch up the oil in attempt to clean the carbon buildup from the ring grooves.
I did this to my GFs Saturn. It had a life of the cheap 5w30 and 10w30 from the local Jizzy Lube joints and it was using a quart of oil with every other tank of gas (400-500 miles).....I started filling it with oil from the shop, Hondas 5w20 and 0w20........by the time I got her out of that car at about 170k miles the consumption rate had dropped by half or more (a quart every 1000-1500 miles depending on who is driving and how it's driven).


Water is normal.
Steam is normal.

Smoke....depends. A cold cat won't be able to hide smoke near as good as a hot cat, so there's that.

abrahamtennyson

I'm not pretty sure if I can rebuild mine because I don't know how to but I'm mechanically inclined and have my own tools. By the way, how do I pop up the pistons when working on the head? Am I not supposed to remove the whole engine from the car to work on the pistons?

Yeah the car has been using 5w30 all it's life but I'm surely going to try using the oil that you suggested. Also, is it okay if I top it up with oil when it loses a quart till it reaches 5000 km for a full oil change?

Thanks

ezone

You can get the head off but not the pistons?
Sounds like you will want to read a good service manual before you try to tackle it.
It's not necessary to remove the engine unless there's just no room to do the work.
I do this type of work on most 4 cylinder and V6 engines with the block installed in the car.

If you don't keep the oil topped off then it will end up empty. You understand what can happen when the oil level becomes TOO low, yes?

If you mean mixing oil weights, that's fine IMO.

Note, if you notice the engine rattles more on thinner oil then I'd switch back to what it's been using.