Burning oil?
05-15-2011, 10:18 PM
#17
Race Director
these cars are designed this way. There have been alot of discussions on this board about it. Most people understand and accept that it is just a unique quality about these cars that you add a little mobil 1 every now and again. you will see that there are a few irate postings by some who feel that an expensive car like this should not burn any oil. I even remember one guy who turned his car back in because of this. Anyway, short answer: this is normal, and most 997s use a little oil.
In a way these cars are designed this way. Or to put it another way, this oil consumption can't be designed out of the car, out of the engine.
I'm no engine designer but what I know of how engines are designed, constructed and work I dare say it is impossible to produce a mass manufactured engine that doesn't use any oil. In fact I believe it would be impossible to design any IC engine like we have in our cars that didn't use any oil. Produce enough of these engines and some will certainly approach a very very low level of oil consumption, all other things being equal but the level will never reach and remain at zero consumptoin.
Now of course some will chip in and state their engine uses no oil. Uh, the engine uses oil. It can't help but use oil when running. It may use very little oil, but given the type of driving, and given the low miles driven between oil changes maybe not enough to require adding any oil. But the engine uses oil nonetheless. Maybe not enough to warrant adding any oil between changes but it uses oil.
Another thing is that as oil is used on an ongoing basis unburned gas and water is accumulated by the oil and this makes up for some of the oil.
I had my Boxster's oil analyzed shortly after I bought the car and the analysis found around 7% water in the oil. Out of 9+ quarts of oil in the engine around half a quart was water. I should mention the engine had no coolant leak, and was driven quite frequently, but in very cold temps and upon further investigation into this I found the engine given my usage just wasn't getting hot enough to boil the water out of the oil. Learnng this and knowing that given the climate where I lived there was nothing I could do about this I then and tehre decided to follow a 5K mile oil/filter service to at least remove the oil with some water in it and replace it with fresh oil. (Oh, this engine now has over 242K miles on it and while it uses a bit more oil now between oil changes still runs as good as it ever did.)
There is no way that an engine that uses 1 quart in 2K miles or even more (up to 1 quart in approx. 600 miles) is a candidate for any attention warranty notwithstanding, unless the engine is exhibiting other symptoms that are related to this oil consumption.
Sincerely,
Macster.
05-16-2011, 11:23 AM
#19
Rennlist Member
Another data point... 2200 miles one bar from the top.
