I have a 2001 Mazda Protege (1.6) with 150,000 miles on it - I drive 1400 miles a week and use 1 quart a week (no smoke). Normal or not
“Normal” depends on how much the car used to burn, and you didn’t tell us that.
1400 miles per quart of oil is not horribly excessive. Many cars with fewer miles consume this much. Does the engine leak oil, or is all of it being burned?
I’d continue to drive and not worry about it too much unless the oil consumption goes way up.
Normal. You should be happy. Try 10/40 oil.
Perfectly normal.
The manufacturer may say it’s normal…but I sure don’t. Especially if it never used oil like that before. I’ve yet to own a vehicle that burns more then 1/2 quart every 3k miles…even when these vehicles had over 300k miles on them…I take it back I did own one…73 Vega. But that no matter what you did that car was going to burn oil.
These are highway miles - it runs great - just after a week I put a quart in and i’ts fine
Buy a case of the cheapest on sale oil and keep motoring on.
The key is-has it changed recently? If consumption has jumped, then something is wrong. If it’s been like this for a long time, it’s OK.
Agree that if this gradually developed, just add 1 quart of the cheapest 10W40 oil every time it needs it.
I never count my Vega when describing anything as normal…but despite everything I still think that was a cool little car. Too bad the quality wasn’t there.
Personally I’d consider a quart every 1400 miles to be comfortably within the normal range for anything with 150K on it. There’s no way I’d tear into an engine, or even be concerned about its health, with that level of usage at that mileage assuming it was running well otherwise.
I guess on this one we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I’ve owned some cars where I would have been happy if the car used only a quart every 1400 miles. For some reason that I don’t understand, some brands of oil seem to give more miles per quart. I once had a Ford Maverick that was using a quart of 10W-40 Sunoco oil every 1000 miles. I was going through the grocery store and Valvoline was on sale at 39 cents a quart (this was a long time ago). I decided to use the Valvoline 10W-40 and even if it took more oil, I would still save money. To my amazement, the car would go 1300 miles per quart with the Valvoline. Oils may be more alike today than in that time period.
How long have you been driving this car 1400 miles a week? You should be changing the oil and filter once a month at that rate. If you haven’t been changing oil that frequently then it’s no surprise it’s burning some oil at 150k.
It could be normal based on the car’s history and driving habits. Many vehicles don’t burn any oil even if 2800 miles in a week is accumulated.
You can probably expect a problem with O2 sensors and catalytic converter in the future when oil deposits start caking up on them.
(And the reason you see no smoke is because of the converter)