lobsterpot

I recently bought an 03 civic si . It has a 1.7 with a 5 speed. I like royal purple oil,I have it in my other car. This car has gone threw 2 litres in 5000 kms.I drive alot of highway miles,so I run in the 3000 to 4000 rpm range.Is this oil consupition normal,or should I be looking for a motor? There are no lights on in the dash. I have changed the plugs,air filtre,and oil . I friend told me that maybe I had the wrong plugs and this could cause this.I put ones with 4 electrons on them . They were NGK in a silver box. Help this is my first Honda.

MPR

Spark plugs have nothing to do with oil consumption. Don't waste your money on the fancy 2 or 4 ground-strap spark plugs. You don't gain any benefits from them, in fact they can cause problems. Just use regular NGK G-power plugs. Much cheaper and work great for a long time.

As for your oil consumption problem, how many km's on the engine? Check the ground for puddles of oil after your car has been parked for a while. Also look under the car on the oil pan and bottom of transmission and look for oil leaks or where oil has been dripping down. It could be the rear main seal, worn piston rings, or worn valve seals. None of these would cause any issues with how the engine runs. They just cause oil loss over time.

nsrhonda89

Did you clean or change your pcv valve? I'm running amsoil 5w30 in my el.

iTaLiAn_vIrUs

if you find your burning oil more often then use a thicker oil... 15-50.. or use a lucas additive to help slow down oil consumption.

mobil 1 15-50w ftw.

and you should be changing your oil every 5000kms IMO.

lobsterpot

where is that on my engine?

lobsterpot

i'm very good on oil changes and i used lucas in another truck i had. i will put it in this car and report back.

lobsterpot

you say to use NGK G-power and not that 4 gound plugs in the car. is that why the tail pipe is kinda sotty and black, but not wet at all.

lobsterpot

i forgot to tell you all the car has 136000 kms on it.i bought it cause it was low mileage and i wanted one for awhile. just got a paint job and all new brakes on it. i figure if i spend now it should be a good car. thank you all for helping me.

MPR

I say to use regular spark plugs because that is what the engine was designed to run on. Pretty much all those special spark plugs with 4 ground straps etc. are all just marketing propaganda. They don't help your engine one bit. I know this first hand because I've tried some of these products over the years and I also have built and raced some fairly heavily modded cars, so I've learned what works and what doesn't.

You can leave them in, but they could potentially cause problems. Especially if the gap is incorrect.

But again, the spark plugs have absolutely nothing to do with your oil consumption. That is most likely due to one of the things I listed in my previous comments.

EF.Hatch

An engine with that low of kms shouldn't be using/burn any oil. The engine must have been beat on or overheated. Do a compression and leak down test to check your rings. Also check for blow by. As far as plugs, it depends on the engine. My brother has used the E3 and his truck loves them and they are not propaganda. His truck had better etest numbers and ran smoother. However my other brothers car won't run on anything but ngk's. Anyways plugs have zero effect on oil.

MPR

Yeah, I've heard mixed reviews about the E3 spark plugs. The thing is, some people put them in and say "hey it runs better and get's better fuel mileage too!", but what they fail to realize is that they just replaced their old, dirty, worn out spark plugs which have too much gap, with new clean plugs with the proper gap. Of course it's going to run better. Regardless of what type of plug you put in, any new spark plugs will show improvements over an old, worn set with many km's on them.

A true proper test is to use brand new plugs of various types and try them with consistent climate conditions, driving routes, dyno runs and etests. Something that is very difficult to do. Any other testing is very subjective to many varying factors and the change in climate alone can skew the results significantly.

EF.Hatch

^^ my brother replaced his new plugs with these. alls im saying is every engine reacts differently.

On Topic:
Your oil problem is similar to my brothers truck. He can't run mobil 1 as it "disappears" with a month of driving. You can't run royal purple as you rings are not worn in on it and therefore will not seal proper with this oil. Use a different oil and see if the problem continues. In his case he had to switch back to a semi-synthetic blend. He also never changed oil weights, 5w-30 the entire time.

MPR

Non-synthetic and semi-synthetic blends consist of less uniform molecule sizes. They contain some larger molecule sizes that prevent the oil from passing through smaller/tighter gaps/tolerances.

Full-synthetic oil consists of very uniform sized molecules and these molecules are much smaller than the large molecules found in non-synthetic oils. Because all the molecules are smaller, the oil flows much more freely through smaller gaps and tighter tolerances.

This is why an engine with worn piston rings or exhaust valve seals will consume or lose oil more quickly when running full synthetic.

There is nothing wrong with running royal purple, it'll just disappear more quickly than non-synthetic oil. The weight has to do with viscosity at varying temperatures, so changing the weight will not necessarily help oil consumption. Running a thicker oil in an engine not designed for it could cause damage and blow out various seals as it can increase oil pressure significantly above the ideal operating limits.

There is one other option that I found actually helped which is to add Lucas oil heavy-duty oil stabilizer: http://www.lucasoil.ca/products/engi...-additives.asp (2nd item from the top on the page). I use this stuff in my wife's 94 accord wagon with 440,000kms on the original engine. It has significantly decreased oil consumption, engine noise and lengthened the required oil change interval to about 10,000kms, even while using regular non-synthetic oil. I'm actually thinking about using it in my supra the next time I change the oil as it is also consuming oil at about 1L per 3 weeks. The accord was consuming oil at about the same rate, but since adding this Lucas stuff, it only consumes about 1L per 7-10k kms.