Mazda 3 oil consumption

Mazda 3 sp 23 burning oil. I cannot see any leaks nor is there blue smoke. 2005 mazda

You don’t list vehicle mileage or just how much oil is being used in X number of miles. Have you just acquired this car?

Is there a question?

Usually if your burning oil it is the piston rings or the valve seals but more information would be helpful.

+1
Even though diagnoses via cyberspace can be…dicey…if the OP can at least give us the courtesy of providing specific information, we will have a better chance of being helpful. Ergo…How much oil is being consumed, and in what number of miles is that consumption taking place?

And, relating to whether this car might have been purchased recently…Does the OP have the previous owner’s maintenance records in order to verify the oil change intervals over the past 12 years? If the car was not recently purchased, what can the OP tell us about his own approach to maintenance with this car?

:confused:

Car has 95k. I am not sure hiw much it it burning. Mt dsughters car. Sibce last oil change 3k it consumed most of oil. Had to put 2 qts to bring it to low line on stick

Soooo 3 quarts in 3000 miles by your own data is 1000 miles per quart. That is really not high oil consumption on an engine with 95K. Not even enough to really worry about EXCEPT your daughter obviously never checks the oil and THAT is a problem. 3 quarts low will kill that engine if you do it often enough. She needs to check the oil every gas fill up and carry a quart or 2 in the car all the time.

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My car has just about 95K and I don’t have to top off between oil changes . . . and I change oil every 5K

I check the oil level every other week, btw

so I think 1qt/1000 miles may technically be acceptable, but I consider it to be on the high side. Something is definitely not sealing very well on OP’s Mazda, imo

I agree with Mustangman . . . in the sense that NOT checking the oil level is the major problem. If the engine oil level is checked and corrected periodically, perhaps every 2 weeks, the engine might just have a long and happy life

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I bought a 3 about 6 months ago with the 2.0 engine. It does something I’ve never seen before. When the engine is cold or has been off for an hour or so you pull out the dipstick and it has no oil at all on it. Scared me at first. Stuck it back in and pulled it out…oil! Does it every time.

Running the engine chronically low on engine oil just exacerbates the oil consumption problem.

If the car were mine I’d run both a dry and wet compression test to determine if the end is prematurely approaching.

Agree on compression test.

Myself, I was using http://xado.info/en/our-technology on multiple cars to get engine “back to life”, although it is not a magic wand, so it will make it better, but will not make the engine new again.

+1
That rate of oil consumption–especially for a 12 year old vehicle with an unknown maintenance history–is not really terrible, but the failure of the OP’s daughter to check the oil on a frequent basis is potentially terrible.

High oil consumption can only kill an engine if the vehicle’s owner refuses to perform normally-expected checking and correcting of the oil level.

Doing some diagnostic checks–as suggested by ok4450–is a good idea, but the OP has to bear in mind that the book value of this car doesn’t logically allow for the expenditure of big bucks on repairs at this point. Instead, simply teaching his daughter to be prudent about checking and correcting the oil level on a frequent basis is a low-cost possible solution to this problem.

My 79k Outback consumes ~1/4 of a qt of oil between its 4k-5k oil changes, and even though my crankcase holds 7 qts, I refill the oil to the full mark as soon as I notice that miniscule drop in the oil level. By contrast, the OP’s daughter apparently allows her much smaller crankcase to fall 3 qts below the “full” mark. Can the OP guess whose engine is likely to last longer?
:expressionless:

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Yes that is the bug problem. She doesnt chexk the oil till its too late. I own a honda accord and it burned oil. The rings were shot. I was dumpung 3 quarts before oil changes

Huh, I don’t know if I trust the Ruskies yet to put that stuff in my engine. My diesel was down to a quart every 500 miles none of mine take more than a half pint between changes. Not fun but oil is relatively cheap.

VDCdriver has the right idea about always keeping the oil level at the FULL mark because really there is no such thing as a no harm/no foul situation when running the oil even a quart down.

Low oil just runs the oil temperatures up dramatically and that in turn leads to the oil breaking down which in turn leads to oil sludging/coking and consumption issues.

If every motorist adopted VDCdriver’s methodogy there would be far, far fewer engine issues.

I wonder if this situation could be hereditary? I’ve owned many GM and Chrysler cars, one GM car has well over 300,00 miles and none uses any significant amount of oil between changes.

Even so, the oil levels and other fluids are checked weekly and changes done in a timely manner.

Both my kids inherited the same maintenance strategies. Their cars don’t consume oil.

Heredity or bad cars, I don’t know which… unless something isn’t quite up to standards in the maintenance department.

Running a car low on any critical fluids, for any reason or excuse, is a car killer.
CSA

Ask your shop to do a wet/dry compression test, a test for leaky valve stem seals, and test the pcv system.

I too have always believed this.

I think of it as a contamination-per-volume problem. The contamination added to the oil via blowby and/or whatever will be the same whether it has four quarts of oil (my car’s capacity) or only three. But the effects of the contamination diluted in four quarts of oil should be less substantial that the effects of the same amount of contamination diluted in three quarts of oil. Four quarts is 33-1/3% greater than three quarts.

Additionally, one of oil’s tasks is to wash heat from the cylinder walls. Heat will be dissipated more effectively in four quarts of fluid than in three.

My history with this philosophy? In 1/2 century of driving, many of the cars for hundreds of thousands of miles, I’ve never worn out or had to do major work on an engine of mine. I have 245,000 on my current car and it still runs great. I had 338,000 on my Toyota pickup when it got totaled and it still only use a quart every 1,200 miles and ran solidly and reliably.

From one of my GM Owner’s Manuals:
"At every fuel fill…
Check the oil level and add the proper oil if necessary. See page 5-16…" (There one can find illustrations and detailed instructions)

I bet you’d find a similar admonition in nearly every car’s Owner’s Manual!

I check my oil weekly on cold engines, but that’s just what works best for me. The important part is the checking and adding.

And that’s not all!
That little Owner’s Manual that is provided free of charge with every car is a veritable wealth of information that will insure a long and happy life for both the vehicle and its owner/operator.

If more motorists spent time to read and heed that little book many, many problems could be avoided. :wink:
CSA

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Mine has 546 pages, and does not list maintenance intervals. Another book, not available online, list that.