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Ever since I have had my C4 (since October 2006) the oil needs topping up every few 1000 miles- in the first year the local dealer checked it out- found no leaks and topped it up . Since then its a regular litre every 3 months - but no sign of a leak. Is this normal for petrol C4s ?
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Since then its a regular litre every 3 months ............
To put it into perspective, how many miles per litre does it do?
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Its probably about 3000-4000 miles for a litre.
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Sounds like you never ran the car in hard enough - if it desn't get enough revs to bed-in early in it's life, and gets glazed bores, oil consumption will always be high.
A guy I worked with had a Merc ML - it had obviously spent its life on the school run as it used a litre of synthetic every 1000 miles - still within spec said MB.
He sold it hafter a year and lost £16k IIRC
MVP
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The car does 12,000 miles a year - and a regular 55 mile daily round trip to work- half of it on the M11, so it should have been 'run in' well.
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But did you give it plenty of revs frequently?
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but did you drive it quite hard ( high revs) during the running in process?
1 litre per 3-4k miles is well within tolerance
Having said that my 1.9 seat pd diesel was thrashed to within an inch of its life during its first 1000 miles, and it now uses NO oil between 10k mile services (now on 33k miles)
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I put 1.5- 2lires of oil between services in my toyota yaris diesel and it is only a 1.4 unit so
steve100's oill consumption doesn't sound to bad to me. I do mostly motorway driving by the way so have the revs at a high regular sustained rate.
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but did you drive it quite hard ( high revs) during the running in process?
I've always abided by the recommendations of manufacturers from the days when they used to be included in Owners Guides. The recommendations were to avoid high speeds and loads for the first few thousand miles, and not to remain at the same throttle opening for too long ~ in other words lift your foot off and re-apply every so often. Although with the improved manufacturing processes of today formal running-in is no longer necessary, I still avoid high speeds for the first few thousand miles and I've never had a problem of high oil consumption. I have a friend who says "Drive new cars fast and they'll be fast", and I wouldn't dispute that his cars will loosen up before mine. But in the process of loosening them up fast he'll be speeding up the time that will elapse before problems occur!
Edited by L'escargot on 27/07/2009 at 17:19
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Appologies for stuff I've posted before
We bought a new boat last year with a 115hp 4-stroke engine - running-in instructions were to use max revs for one minute in 10 for the 1st 10 hours
It's never burn't a drop of oil, nor has our Forester that was also properly run-in
MVP
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Done almost 1400 miles in my 1.2 16v Corsa since I got (almost on 82k now) and I reckon its used about 100ml of oil in that time if that. My dads 1.6 Escort was the same, the only time it had oil in it was once a year for the chancege. Even when it needed a change (10k later) it was still almost on max.
My dads Fiesta on the other hand using about 1 litre per 1500 miles. My mates soon to be scrapped Fiesta uses about 250ml per 100 miles but its been like that for ever and apart from the cost it dosn't seem to do any harm to the way the engine runs.
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thats one litre every 400 miles!
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Yep and is one of the main reasons its getting scrapped apart from the fact its rusty. He is getting a brand new Panda on the scrappage. He uses cheap Tesco 20/50 mineral oil but he has the old 1.1 Kent block with EFI so they can take it. I suspect his insistance of using cheap oil has made the wear worse but its had mineral all its life so he could not switch to semi synth anyway.
Edited by Rattle on 27/07/2009 at 18:24
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one litre every 400 miles!
... and a permanent thin blue haze one would think. 'Soon to be scrapped' though. What a pity.
All this health and safety legislation is taking the savour out of urban motoring. Soon we will be nostalgic for the smoke-belching traffic of Lagos and Djakarta, the 7-litre V8s firing on five or six cylinders in Manhattan in the seventies...
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That is the odd thing there is not much smoke. I suspect its leaking mainly from the sump and the rocker gasket (I know his rocker leaks).
My old Fiesta 'rattle' the one I sold in 2007 used this much oil but it also produced so much blue smoke as the piston rings had gone.
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on the OP's question, a litre every 3K miles is nothing to worry about at all. Some engines use oil, others don't, it can depend on running in but also may not do ... engines are built to tolerances, some will be on the small end of that tolerance and others on the large end.
Either way, it's getting a dose of fresh oil additives every so often which will do it no harm at all.
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I followed an 08 plate transit on the A24 today, it was pumping out black smoke from the exhaust when accelerating. You don't see what the driver following you sees. It looks like a car with canine qualities.
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Checked the oil on my new (to me) C4 1.6 petrol at 19k and was full, approx 2 months later and just had the low warning light go on at 20k, had to put in a litre to bring back to top of dipstick.
Seems very excessive to me, anyone else had this sort of oil consumption on the C4 petrol or have any suggestions.
Hopefully going to the dealers next week as still has a few months warranty left on it but thought I'd ask.
Cheers
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Shes been in today for a few things and chap in the dealers said that 1 litre consumption in 600 miles is considered there 'tolerance', this seems way too high to me, that would mean around 30 litres of oil topping up between services. Surely this isnt correct for a modern engine? Or am I being 'fobbed off' because they dont want to open up the lump and check inside?
Dealer topped up to full and will check how much gone when I go back to have other problems sorted.
Should I syphon half a litre out of the dipstick hole just to gee them up a bit?, its still under warranty :-)
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I wouldn't blame you if you did. At that rate of oil consumption that must add about £500 a year to your running costs, not exactly reasonable really.
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Should I syphon half a litre out of the dipstick hole just to gee them up a bit?
You'd need a lot of patience to siphon out half a litre. It would probably take umpteen hours. Sucking it out with a suction pump would be much more satisfactory.
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Doh, thats what I meant, I have a sucky pump for oil.
So you think I should pull a slightly fast one and increase the 'consumption'? ;-)
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So you think I should pull a slightly fast one and increase the 'consumption'? ;-)
They would have to know where the oil was being used/lost before they did any work - they're not likely to just chuck a new engine in.
I would reckon of you did cheat on the oil level then they'd take the car in and run their own tests. Merc had this problem in the US on some engines and the dealers had to establish a test route to check the car's oil consumption. And have others have said, the allowable amount is ridiculously high.
Edited by Bill Payer on 24/09/2009 at 20:25
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Fair enough, I may do 500 miles before they get the other parts in and it the motor goes back to them, hopefully there will have been a big enough drop in oil to persuade them to have a look. Then again, maybe I'll just take a lil bit out.
I wonder if I should get it in writing that its not going to increase after a few months too?, as the end date of the warranty is only a two months off.
Edited by corblimeyguvnar on 24/09/2009 at 20:43
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Even at the very end of its life my 1100 Fiesta was only using a pint every 500 miles - and most of that was dripping out of the bottom. My reasoning (at the time) was I would always be running on new clean oil. Very cheap oil, but new and clean, nonetheless.
I am therefore amazed that Citroen can call the consumption described above as within tolerance, for what is a modern, low mileage engine.
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Shes been in today for a few things and chap in the dealers said that 1 litre consumption in 600 miles is considered there 'tolerance' this seems way too high to me that would mean around 30 litres of oil topping up between services. Surely this isnt correct for a modern engine? Or am I being 'fobbed off' because they dont want to open up the lump and check inside?
>
Yes, somewhere in the last few manuals I've had for Vauxhalls there has been a statement that 1 litre per 1000km is considered normal although it seems waaay too high to me.
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Yes somewhere in the last few manuals I've had for Vauxhalls there has been a statement that 1 litre per 1000km is considered normal
It's actually 1 litre per 1000 miles, or 0.6 litres per 1000 km.
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D'oh I sit corrected :-). Still seems a lot of oil though!
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Still seems a lot of oil though!
You've obviously never owned an Allagro that consumed a gallon of oil every 400 miles ;o)
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Moons ago, my old 300zx sprung a leak from it's engine oil cooler hose about 80 miles from home on a Sunday - took me 7 litres of oil to get home - topped up to full - drove until the oil pressure gauge started to drop - topped up to full - rinse/repeat.
In retrospect it probably cost a few motorcyclists their lives due to the gentle spray from the underside, but on the bright side their organs probably saved a dozen others...
Anyways, nowadays I have breakdown cover :-)
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Pity the poor swan coming into land on the `moonlit river` - only to discover tarmac with a sheen of motor oil and flakes of chrome from motorcyclists hip joints instead of starlight reflecting off waves.
Best not think of the Kingfisher in it`s vertical dive for the silver eel...
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Folk in the UK tend to worry too much about oil consumption, and keep topping up to the max mark. If you do that to my loony tunes crossflow (1840cc and a CR more like diesel) it probably does 2 or 300 miles per pint. But the oil consumption once the level is about 2/3 between the marks falls drastically Let it drop a bit, but not below the min and see if that makes a difference.
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An interesting idea, although I cant quite get my head around how my engine knows when to stop consuming oil after it gets to 2/3rds down the dip.
But you may well be right about the worrying too much, OCD strikes again.
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Sounds like oil is leaking out pof somewhere a little way up the engine and when the level falls there is insufficient oil or splash to leak any more e.g. front crankshaft seal or similar?
Have you got underneath and has a good look round for where oil may be leaking and simply blown away, dried up by the wind. If it was burning oil it would do it all the time.
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Not a lot of ground clearamce to look underneath but have had a good try and nothing there, maybe have another good look tomorrow but it is darn clean down there.
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