oil use

[joel poulson]

i have 2 01 aurora's, both with 3.5's, one with 67m, one with 78m. both use oil excessivly(1qt/1000m), neither seems to be leaking. has anyone else had this problem, and does anyone know a reasonable fix.

[LesGrandsPieds]

That's a curious problem. So you have two '01! That's cool, you must really love 'em. I'm just a classic-lover myself.
Yeah, that oil loss sounds like bad news.
1 - Are you sure you have been changing the oil often enough?
2 - Is there any way you could get a good look near the exhaust for signs of burning oil? Try having a friend drive behind you some time and ask him if he sees any sign of oil burning. Oil burn-off is the worst when the engine is really working hard, like when you push on the gas from a complete stop.
3 - It's also very possible that your car leaks only when it gets to a high enough temperature and that's probably the reason you can't find much evidence in the driveway.

[OldsAuroraMan1]

Caddy Northstars are famous for this! Working in a Caddy Garage as a service advisor we frequently had this happen - with excellently maintained/babied Northstars and almost always under 50X. Why? Junk gets stuck on the rings. We had to do a top engine treatment on them and sometimes let them sit overnight, suction them out and then, well, DRIVE them up the road at highway speed for a few miles - in 1st gear. Carbon builds up on the rings. Cadillac had a bulletin on it after a while. Most of those customers just did a lot of "around town" driving. Not much highway running or "vigorous activity" with the engines and they do this.