2001 losing oil

[C man]

I think im one of the few who experience VERY HIGH oil consumption. I burn thru 1qt every 1400 miles. it was 1200 at first until i changed out one side of my valve seals. Gonna do the other side soon. But only expect it to curb the oil cosumption by another 200 miles. I have no external leaks , even changed out the oil pan gasket. I suspect maybe the rear valve cover gasket is leakin a little bit becuase I can smell oil under hard acceleration. But there is no signs off oil leaking around it. Can't figure it out. Tried using high mileage oil but as mention early and in other post it doesn't really do anything, didn't for me either. When I change the other side valve seals I'll see how much improvement it does. Don't expect much though. My emissions are low and I don't have blue smoke so I think I just have to live with it.

[pcmos]

I've been running Mobile 1 Extended Life 5W-30 in my LeSabre's since I got a driver's liscence. On rare occasions when I've had a change done professionally or when I was too broke to buy synthetic I would run the conventional oil. I really don't notice any major difference except that my consumption seems to be better with the synthetic Mobile 1 and the engine runs slightly smoother. I've had external leaks on all three LeSabres (1992 2000 2004) regardless of what kind of oil I've used.

I've started another thread regarding a really frustrating oil leak on my 04 that other people have mentioned on here before. I'm going to track it down and solve the problem though and continue using synthetic oil. When I dropped my pan to replace the pan gasket recently my internals looked brand new (90k miles). My feeling is that the Amsoil explaination is correct. Detergents in the synthetic oil are simply exposing and exploiting gaskets that were already weak and seeping. I'd rather fix leaky gaskets than to mask the problem by using lower quality conventional oil.

My consumption is approximately 1.5 quarts per oil change interval. I change my oil when the oil life reads 15% regardless of mileage. Given the extended life of my Mobile 1 Synthetic and the 7500 mile filter, I never worry about mileage and simply rely on the computer calculations. My feeling is that most of my consumption is related to a frustrating external leak which basically reveals itself in the form of a few droplets and some residue on the pan. Over the course of a change interval, that could easily amount to a quart or so in loss.

[C man]

changing the oil pan gasket more than likely won't do much. I changed mine a while ago and it didn't affect oil consumption at all. It was the kind of leak that just got the oil pan a little wet but never dropped on the ground. What I have recently realized is that oil is migrating from my lower intake manifold and is also slightly leaking. I also recently changed the other valve cover gasket. no help. I'm using a quart of oil ever 1200-1400 miles. So your a lot more fortunate than me.

One question I have? Does the fact that the lower manifold is leak some oil mean that its failing. Had the car since it had 108k on. Been leaking for a long time but I recently started to may attention to it. From the stamp on the upper manifold it was replaced in 2003.

[Jrs3800]

C Man good to see you again..

You may be experiencing some issues like I had... The 95-96 Series II's seem to have these issues with high mileage..

Mine started using oil as well, and consumption kept increasing... No matter what oil I used I could burn through a good bit of oil.. I used to do 1/2 a quart in 3000 miles... Towards the end it was close to 2 quarts in 3000 miles..

I pulled the motor at 161,000 miles... Popped the heads off to find that I had really bad piston slap.. Had a tick for years I could never get rid of... It was cylinder 4 that had the issue... The issues was excessive piston to bore clearnace that caused a thud thud thud from the motor, almost sounding like a bad wrist pin... There were 3 other cylinders like this, but #4 was the worst.. The rings got beat up and cause the oil consumption..

But I can't complain as this motor always was abused by me... 6000 Rpm shifts all of the time is enough to finish any motor.. But to go 161,000 miles, I do have to call that buick motor tuff..

[pcmos]

Before I traded the 2000 LeSabre I had planned to perform a Series II / Series III intake swap. Part of my plan was to replace the lower intake and gaskets due to the oil consumption issue. I may have to take my box of parts out again and do the same swap on my 2004. At least my 04 doesn't consume coolant.

I feel like the oil loss could be coming from the end cap seals on either side of the lower intake manifold.

[C man]

I finally stopped my oil consumption. I replaced the other side of my valve stem seals and so far no oil consumption in the last 300miles. The oil would go down one notch every 300miles. Very happy now. Should have did it a long time ago but i didn't have the right tools and I finally figured the magic to getting the keepers on which made the job a thousand time easier and faster.

Just posting as a future refrence to someone experience high oil consumption.

[pcmos]

That's actually really interesting C Man, I've never done valve stem seals myself. Would you mind posting some more details on the job? What sorts of tools did you find useful? I don't think my engine is consuming oil internally but down the road that's a job I could see myself doing. I'd certainly appreciate hearing more about it.

[C man]

Well its fairly simple if you have the right tools. You need an air compressor and adapter for the spark plug hole, needle nose pliers, valve spring compressor, and (forgot the name of the tool) one of those magnetic pick ups.

The problem I had the first time I did the job was that the needle nose pliers that I had were to big, I didn't have extra keepers, and I didn't know the trick into getting the keepers back on easy. You have to use the magnet thing.

Also a note: The first side I changed didn't remidy the oil consumption at all. Only by like 200mi and I'm assuming here. When I changed the rear I have yet to have anymore oil consumption. Why this way? I have no idea. When I checked the spark plugs the first time I did the job they all had signs of oil leakage. When I did the rear 2 out of three of the spark plugs had signs of oil leakage.

But u could very well have valve stem failure. I got the car with 108k miles on it. It was at least 2.5qts low on oil when I bought it. So this tell me that it had an oil consumption early on and until recently has always burned the same amount of oil 1qt every 12-1400miles. I had changed the pcv valve out and the oil pan gasket. I say its worth a look into.

[HotZ28]

Originally Posted by C man

Well its fairly simple if you have the right tools. You need an air compressor and adapter for the spark plug hole, needle nose pliers, valve spring compressor, and (forgot the name of the tool) one of those magnetic pick ups.

The problem I had the first time I did the job was that the needle nose pliers that I had were to big, I didn't have extra keepers, and I didn't know the trick into getting the keepers back on easy. You have to use the magnet thing.

Also a note: The first side I changed didn't remidy the oil consumption at all. Only by like 200mi and I'm assuming here. When I changed the rear I have yet to have anymore oil consumption. Why this way? I have no idea. When I checked the spark plugs the first time I did the job they all had signs of oil leakage. When I did the rear 2 out of three of the spark plugs had signs of oil leakage.

But u could very well have valve stem failure. I got the car with 108k miles on it. It was at least 2.5qts low on oil when I bought it. So this tell me that it had an oil consumption early on and until recently has always burned the same amount of oil 1qt every 12-1400miles. I had changed the pcv valve out and the oil pan gasket. I say its worth a look into.

IIRC, C man, we discussed this nearly a year ago Click Here; glad to see you finally got the back side changed. Another trick when installing the keepers, is to use grease on the keeper. The grease will hold them in place until you release the spring pressure. Good job, now that you know some of the tricks of the trade, I hope you found out that it's not as difficult as you what you encountered during your first experience. BTW, the reason you did not see a major improvement when replacing the front seals; it is like trying to walk on one crutch, when both legs are broken! You fixed one side; however, the other side was still impaired and probably increased consumption!