burns oil when cold

[blacksheep]

my car only burns oil when its cold, i think that i could have a a leeaky or a few leaky piston rings, and some how the expand when they warm up so they dont leak, unless theres some other way the oil only burns when the engine is cold

[BullShifter]

How much oil are you burning with 344,000 miles?

[KoRnSaQ]

I would just go ahead and rebuild the engine.. unless you are wanting to swap it

[blacksheep]

it burns about a quart of oil every month, i wanna do an engine swap but its gonna take awhile to save up money

[sastanley]

Generally cold oil burning comes from the valve seals....The oil drips down them and then sits on the piston and burns off at start-up.

Do you get blue smoke when u first start it that goes away after a few minutes??? Normally blow-by (oil leaking past the rings) is more noticeable at high engine speeds (smoke-screening the bitches behind you at traffic lights, etc..)

One thing you can try is thicker oil. With that many miles, all the tolerances are probably pretty loose in that car, so some 20w50 may not leak/seap into the cracks & crevices as much.

I even burn about 1 quart a month (1000-1200 miles) on my car with 215k on it. Mostly mine is blow-by, I am not getting any smoke at start-up with this car....yet i'd say your ol' Civic is holding up pretty well...

[BullShifter]

1 quart a month with that mileage is nothing to worry about, besides topping off the oil. I would run 10w-40 & see how that does.

[riceriderjade]

yeah, some of your valve seals are just shot, but if your saving up for a swap, its a lot cheaper just to occationally throw some oil in there, get some thicker stuff at your next schedualed change and live with it