My 1995 Chevy 5.7 is sucking down oil ...

BoltOnJohn

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Location
Franklinton, NC
like a thirsty sailor does rum.

As in a quart every ~300 miles. No huge clouds of smoke but it's going somewhere and it's not in the coolant or in a puddle on the driveway.

How much is too much?

It does have 185k miles and I bought the truck cheap figuring a rebuilt engine was in the near feature. I'm just wondering what to expect if I just keep dumping in oil and driving it. Oil is cheap. :)
 
John, I use 'Restore'. It's in a can and you pour it in the crank case.You can get it at Advance, AZ, etc. I can notice a difference in power in my tow truck. It really seems to help with compression which is were your oil is probably going.
My .02

JB
 
Rockeater said:
John, I use 'Restore'. It's in a can and you pour it in the crank case.You can get it at Advance, AZ, etc. I can notice a difference in power in my tow truck. It really seems to help with compression which is were your oil is probably going.
My .02

JB
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I already tried that. LOL. I'm not typically a believer in miracle goos but I threw in a can of Restore.

It funs fine. It just drinks the oil.
 
Did you replace the pcv valve? I've many engines that will take that much oil with a bad valve.

I''m not familiar with the 5.7 vortec but the dodge 5.4 and 5.9 will occasionally blow the plenum gasket and will take down a quart every fillup with no adverse running conditions. The motor simply sucks the fuel through the intake and burns it with the gas. A quick test was a wet intake plenum and a quick suction test while the vehicle was runnning.
 
As long as it's just eating oil it shouldn't hurt anything. You will have a problem passing emissions if it's bad enough. At some point you will lose more power and the smoking will probably get worse. A quart every 300 sounds pretty high though. Does it smell like oil behind it? If you plan on a rebuild I'd save and wouldn't worry to much. My dad's old company had a chevy that ran over 300,000. I think he said it started using oil around 200,000. I'm not sure how much oil it used but they didn't worry about it. You might want to rethink heavy towing?
 
I'm going to check the PCV valve first. That sounds like a good candidate.

As far as heavy towing goes... This truck's only purpose is to tow my Jeep.
 
Ok, I pulled out the PCV valve. It's fairly easy to blow air through it in the direction from valve cover to throttle body. Is that a sufficient test? Or should I just replace it?
 
BoltOnJohn said:
Ok, I pulled out the PCV valve. It's fairly easy to blow air through it in the direction from valve cover to throttle body. Is that a sufficient test? Or should I just replace it?
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does it rattle when you shake it?

they are designed to allow air to flow freely but plug if oil passes through
if it rattles most of the time they are still good.

but as cheap as they are you could just drop a new one in it.
 
you can try mechanic in a bottle or a pcv valve or any other nickel and dime crap....but just face it, at 185K something in the ring belt is worn to drink that much oil in such short a distance.
 
StudNuts said:
you can try mechanic in a bottle or a pcv valve or any other nickel and dime crap....but just face it, at 185K something in the ring belt is worn to drink that much oil in such short a distance.
Click to expand...

Ah, the voice of cheer. :)

That's what I figure, as well. I didn't expect a lot more life out of this engine but figured I'd ask on here. I replaced the PCV valve but haven't driven far enough to use a quart yet. We'll see how that does.
 
Hey. Maybe the engine isn't quite dead! (I'm having a Monty Python flashback here.... Bring out your dead...)

After replacing the PCV valve I've used ~1/4 quart in 200 miles. So the cheapo fix might work out after all. :) I'll report back when it drops all the way to 1 quart low. I know you folks are hanging on the edge of your seats.
 
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