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2006 Caravan Oil Use


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brakerf
01-20-2009, 01:46 PM
I have a 2006 Caravan and it uses oil a lot. It may go through 3-4 qts a change. 3000 miles. I do NOT have any oil on the garage floor and cannot see any blue smoke coming from the car. I have had it to Chrysler and they are scratching there heads. Any ideas?

tempfixit
01-20-2009, 08:00 PM
How many miles on vehicle and has it been doing this since new. Sounds like the oil rings are lined up to me. Have they done a compression test?

brakerf
01-21-2009, 03:07 PM
It has 36k miles. I did not buy it new it 12k when I bought it. I would think if the rings where bad it would smoke it does not

MagicRat
01-21-2009, 04:59 PM
This consumption level is borderline acceptable.

As noted above, worn rings or valve guides tend to burn oil at certain times, such as decelleration (rings) or when pulling away from a traffic light (guides)
If there is no smoke, then it is consuming oil at a slow and steady pace. As noted above a fault with ring assembly or a sticking ring might do this.

If rings are sticking, sometimes they can be freed-up by pouring in a couple of ounces of ATF into each cylinder and let it soak for a few days. If you do this, remove the oil by spinning the engine over with the spark plugs removed, or else you will damage the engine.

Try pulling all the spark plugs. If one cylinder is responsible, that spark plug will be much darker at the tip than the others.

But realistically, unless the spark plugs are getting really black/sooty/fouled, I would not worry about it. Your engine is burning approx. 1 cc (a few drops) of oil each mile, which is not much. Yes, it is a bit annoying to add oil, but realistically, your engine will benefit from a quart of fresh oil being added to the crankcase periodically.

My '97 Cadillac has the same oil consumption rate that you have. Apparently, ALL Caddy Northstar engines (1994 and up) have similar oil consumption rates, It is just a quirk of the design; there is nothing actually going wrong, so all owners just live with it.

vipergg
01-24-2009, 08:23 PM
Thats pretty unusual for the 3.3 or the 3.8 although Chrysler will tell you 1 quart per 1000 miles is within normal levels . You will have to push chrysler to fix this whether rebuild or replacement . Don't know what you have for a warranty on it.

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