does anyone have this promblem becauz i notice dat my car is loosin oil for quite sometime now. i took it twice at the subaru dealer for checkup dey said nuttin wrong wif it. i need sum1's suggestion if its normal for turbo cars or i prolly need a turbo timer. i really need help so i can take it bacc to the dealer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

a turbo timer will not help you keep from losing oil or from leaking.

Make sure you're using the right size oil filter (different year wrxs have different size filters) and always use a brand new crush washer.

 

You should know if you're leaking oil, the stain on your driveway will tell you that.

If you're burning 1quart every 1000 miles thats considered normal by subaru standards. Burning 1 quart less than 1000 miles is not good

 

^^^one quart per 1000 miles...WOW that sounds like a lot. If your car burns that much oil either your turbo is blown or your piston rings are toast. My WRX eats about a 1/2 quart of oil per 3000 miles.

 

my 04wrx lost(burned) 2 qts in 3000 miles (nothing on the driveway)- the car only has 11,500 miles. the dipstick reads high when the car is hot (i know this) and the dealer told me that the wrx reads low when cold- what the??? my 04 only reads low when the oil is low.

 

Ive come to the conclusion that oil consumption (for me) is based soley on how hard I drive. If I drive like a granny, it will consume little to nothing, but if I drive like a bat out of hell, always on boost and with high rpms/redlining it will consume A LOT faster.

On nasioc, someone posted a fax from subaru that said 1quart/1000 miles is normal...I just always make sure to check the oil once or twice a week(when the car is cold, or warm and been sitting for 20-30 min, flat surface of course). 1 qt every 1500-2000 is not uncommon for me.

 

thnax for everyones reply. now i feel more better dat itz normal.

 

maybe you should get an oil catch can to see if you're driving so hard that oil is going back into the intake track.

 

I don't care what that fax said, losing that much oil is NOT normal. My 02 WRX loses barely any oil at all, 3700 mile intervals between changes; I'm tuned to 16.5 psi (max) with a turboback, copper plugs and a heavy right foot. Burning that much oil seems to indicate an engine with blow-by (as in not properly burned in or with a tiny piston ring crack). If the oil isn't ending up on the garage floor, it is getting combusted; in the long run this is bad for catalytic convertors and your turbo. I'd say pull your intercooler and run your finger around the inside of the inlet and outlet; if yo've got a lot of oil, you're getting blow-by.

 

hehehe.. ye olde oil problems lol. i am not so sure about the newer wrxs, but i have noticed similair oil consumotion on my 2.2l. it does seem that the harder i drive the more oil i lose.

however i contribute this to some other reasons. such as a leaky oil pressure sending unit. which under high oil presure (high RPMs) might be spurting oil out of the car. also a leaky o ring on the oil filler stem which will blow some oil out ocasinally. but i know for a fact that oil is geting into my intake. you can feel it in the throttle body.

i dont know if the above statement about blowby is correct. granted there will be oil in your IC but i dont think it is from blow by. if the oil is getting past the cylindyrs and combusted, then it should go out the xhuast and give you some smoke and not back into the intake in liquid form.

i instead believe that since there are 2 breather lines going from the valve covers back to the intake, the oil is coming through there. and the oil in the intake problem can be remedied by an oil catch can. little story to go with this. some on i know runs a huge FMIC on his STi, he took the thing off a while ago and a full quart of mobil 1 poured out of it. now her runs an oil catch can. you can see how much oil is going into it and this is prolly why your losing all that oil under spirited driving.

 

hm, that's interesting. My diagnosis of blow-by is from a conversation I had with an engine tech who supposedly *should* know more about this than I do, but perhaps he's not familliar with boxer engines...

Oil actually doesn't burn very well; in fact oil is formulated to not want to burn. All the volatile stuff is taken out of engine oil (because you don't want it to vaporize or boil) for that reason. His theory was that oil gets left on the cyclinder walls, and during the exhaust stroke unburned oil becomes a fine oil vapor. That vapor, due to emissions controls and the fact that the WRX and STI feature recirculating blow-off valves, gets partially passed back into the intercooler; oil also comes from the breather lines. Thanks to the fact that the WRX is an LEV vehicle and comforms to California emissions, we get to burn our own exhaust :P

Looking at the intack track from the airbox to the throttle body, the only point where oil enters the picture is the cool side of the turbo, but that would only happen if you had an actual crack in the turbo housing and it was leaking oil! Oil in the breathers and recirculation valves was, to the engine tech, a symptom of general leakiness in the engine's overall oil integrity.

Like I said, with my 02 WRX I get almost no oil consumption and both times I have taken off my intercooler there was the tiniest trace of oil inside, but not a quart. I can't figure out whether I was very lucky and got a tight engine, or I'm just not driving hard enough

 

i noticed that when i do my oil changes it seems kinda low but i thought it was a bad read because the engine was cold. i will have to check mine more often. i know that oil consumption is a big deals with rotary engines (late rx7's, rx8's) but i didn't know that subaru's had similar issues.

 

With mine I have a 04 Rex with about 44k on it and ever since I was at about 5000 or so I would check my oil and there would be absolutly no oil in the dipstick at all when hot. I would check it when it is cold (first thing in the morning) and I would be at the second dot (full). On a few occations I would start the car and the oil light would flash and go away. after 3000miles I would check it and would have to add a quart of oil.... my civic had this problem but it had 145k on the ticker.