I have a 98 2.0 Nissan Primera which seems to be using a lot of oil. I has gone from max on the dipstick to min in just under 2000 miles. I average about 500 miles of mainly motorway driving a week. The car has a Nissan Approved warranty and when they looked at it they said they could find nothing obvious and filled it up and told me to check it after a 1000 miles.
It dropped slightly after a 1000 miles but seems to have plummetted in the next 1000.
I have checked the obvious things myself - no visible leaks, spark plugs look OK, air filter fairly clean. The only thing I can see is black dry soot on the inside of the tailpipe- I don't know how significant it is - my wife's Clio is less than 6 months old and it has soot inside the tailpipe as well.
When I first spoke to the dealer - they said it was unheard of for Nissans to use this much oil. The only other thing is that after I bought the car - I discovered a receipt for a head gasket replacement in the documentation (My fault for not checking thoroughly enough). I am wondering if the overheating damaged or scored the cylinders which is now causing the oil loss. Does this sound reasonable ?
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Has it done high mileage? It would be unusual for a Nissan to use such amounts of oil as they are generally very reliable.
Do you know how much is between max and min? Perhaps half to a full litre? It is either burning it or a leak (you would have spotted this already?).
If the valve seals have gone you can usually spot clouds of blue smoke when setting off in traffic after idling for a few minutes.
If bore wear then usually under hard acceleration look in the rear mirror for smoke.
There is a risk with head gasket work that an oilway may have a leak into the combustion chamber?
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It would be useful to know the mileage of this vehicle. A '98 Primera, even with high miles, should be in very good shape. I was once in a Primera taxi that had nearly 500k on it and driver said the engine had never had the head off.
Head gasket failure on the SR20DE engine is very unusual (it would be interesting to know the circumstances), as is oil consumption. The engine holds about 3.5l of oil and I think max-to-min is about 0.5litre.
I would return the car to the dealer and ask for a 'wet' and 'dry' compression test and a 'cylinder leakdown test' - this will localise the problem to bore damage or valve problems, and perhaps identify a faulty cylinder.
My guess is that the problem will be traced back to some 'trauma' in the car's earlier life - can you contact the previous owner?
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Looking at the receipt for the head gasket replacement - it said that the cause was a blocked radiator. It states that the symptoms were poor starting and overheating. I phoned the previous owner and the garage that did the work and they said that the car never actually broke down. I just wonder if by keeping on driving with these symptoms - that they caused some severe engine damage.
When the head gasket went on my Mondeo - it ground to a halt on the M6. The garage that repaired it said that there was some cylinder scoring but it was minor and not worth bothering about.
I kept the car for another 40k miles.
I am taking the car to the dealer tommorrow and will ask them to do these tests. As I understand they are fairly straightforward. If i don't get any joy, I will get an independent garage to do it and take it from there.
P.S the soot on the tailpipe is thick and dry.
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Well, I wonder why radiator got blocked?
Anyway, if car was driven in overheating state then it is possible that the alloy pistons 'over expanded' in the bore. This causes them to go tight and damage both themselves and the bore wall. Piston ring fracture is also possible.
An overheating car will actually slowly start to sieze as the pistons get tighter and tighter.
Best of luck with it. Let us know how you get on.
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The only thing I can think of - is that tap water was used when the coolant was changed. We live in a very hard water area.
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Sorry should have said - the car has just done 60,000 miles.
There are no obvious signs of smoking - just a lot of soot inside the tailpipe.I always assumed it was 1 litre between min and max on the dipstick. The oil capacity is 3.5 litres with new filter.
The only other thing that has gone wrong with the car is that the starter motor has been replaced under warranty.
My brother has an older Primera and it uses no oil at all. My wife had a Micra and did 75k in it without ever topping up the oil.
OTOH the guy next door has a brand new Alfa 156 and it uses 1/2 litre every 1000 miles and has been told by the dealer that this is normal.
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Hmm, a properly looked after Primera with 60k should not need topping up between services (as per your wife's Micra). Obviously there is something not quite right in the car's history; as I said in my previous post it would be best to contact the car's PO.
All cars will accumulate a certain amount of soot in the exhaust. An over-rich mixture will give a thick 'dry' black soot. Burning oil gives a 'wet, sticky' black soot.
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Hello all I have similar problem with my primera 2005 model.
Since march I am loosing oil due to gasket leak and now smoke sometime and see wet soot on the floor if you reve but not all ways no issues with power or noise. what seems to be the problem?
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