Yes, I know. Yet another oil burning thread.
My first post and pics of my car are here:
I was just seeing if I could get some professional opinions on the following:
Car in question is a 2001 Protege ES 5-spd, 2.0 liter engine. I've owned it for quite a long time. She suddenly started using/burning oil around the winter of 2012 (so roughly 5 years ago).
It went from never using oil, to burning about a quart every 500 miles or so. It was quite a shock at the time and I was convinced the car was dying, but... I kept topping off the oil, and the Protege just kept driving fine.
At the time I had no visible smoke at all, even though it was burning a quart every 500 miles.
So I kept doing all the other regular maintenance. I try to do most everything myself, so in recent years she got new brakes (calipers included, as I was having trouble with brakes all over the place and just decided to do it all), new struts (front and back), and some other odds and ends. She's a well maintained vehicle, except for the oil burning problem.
Well, fast forward 5 years, and right now she's burning a quart every 200 miles or so. I currently do get visible black smoke above 4500 RPM's. I don't get smoke on startup or during normal driving.
I had the Mazda dealership in town perform a compression test (I don't have a tester and did not want to deal with it) and they said compression is low on cylinder 3. I have the print out somewhere, I can look it up if need be, but out of the top of my head 3 cylinders are at 180 psi, and the third is at 130 I believe.
They then redid the test wet (by putting oil in the cylinders) and got the same results.
What does that mean?
She's my daily driver and runs incredibly smooth (not a single vibration, a joy to drive honestly), but now at 17 years of age the body is also starting to show signs of rust around the rear wheel wells and a bit on the rocker panels and I am somewhat torn on what to do.
I feel like this is a sinking ship. I'm running 0w30 full synthetic, and am wondering if I should switch to a thicker oil to see what that will do. My concern is just that cold starts in winter will become even worse with thicker oil.
What would you do? I've looked into replacement engines before, but a crate engine is still quite expensive, and I'm hesitant on a junk yard engine. We don't have many junk yards here in Alaska to begin with, and I feel that's a crap shoot too. While I really don't mind turning a wrench, I have never rebuild an engine before and don't know how complicated that will get. My guess is "very".
My first post and pics of my car are here:
I was just seeing if I could get some professional opinions on the following:
Car in question is a 2001 Protege ES 5-spd, 2.0 liter engine. I've owned it for quite a long time. She suddenly started using/burning oil around the winter of 2012 (so roughly 5 years ago).
It went from never using oil, to burning about a quart every 500 miles or so. It was quite a shock at the time and I was convinced the car was dying, but... I kept topping off the oil, and the Protege just kept driving fine.
At the time I had no visible smoke at all, even though it was burning a quart every 500 miles.
So I kept doing all the other regular maintenance. I try to do most everything myself, so in recent years she got new brakes (calipers included, as I was having trouble with brakes all over the place and just decided to do it all), new struts (front and back), and some other odds and ends. She's a well maintained vehicle, except for the oil burning problem.
Well, fast forward 5 years, and right now she's burning a quart every 200 miles or so. I currently do get visible black smoke above 4500 RPM's. I don't get smoke on startup or during normal driving.
I had the Mazda dealership in town perform a compression test (I don't have a tester and did not want to deal with it) and they said compression is low on cylinder 3. I have the print out somewhere, I can look it up if need be, but out of the top of my head 3 cylinders are at 180 psi, and the third is at 130 I believe.
They then redid the test wet (by putting oil in the cylinders) and got the same results.
What does that mean?
She's my daily driver and runs incredibly smooth (not a single vibration, a joy to drive honestly), but now at 17 years of age the body is also starting to show signs of rust around the rear wheel wells and a bit on the rocker panels and I am somewhat torn on what to do.
I feel like this is a sinking ship. I'm running 0w30 full synthetic, and am wondering if I should switch to a thicker oil to see what that will do. My concern is just that cold starts in winter will become even worse with thicker oil.
What would you do? I've looked into replacement engines before, but a crate engine is still quite expensive, and I'm hesitant on a junk yard engine. We don't have many junk yards here in Alaska to begin with, and I feel that's a crap shoot too. While I really don't mind turning a wrench, I have never rebuild an engine before and don't know how complicated that will get. My guess is "very".
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