I think my Fit is burning oil. I'm not sure what to do. Suggestions? Gut feeling says to trade it in. I'm under the impression that this problem is not easy to solve.

Last oil change was at 30k miles. Oil now is at the bottom of the tip, well below the dot mark. I checked before turning on the car this morning. No drip marks on the garage. Muffler exhaust is black...coated with soot.

General background info:
-2009 Honda Fit Sport with Navi w/ ~37k miles.
-Well-maintained (follow the Honda MM).
-No mods. All OEM, except for tires and wheels.
-Motion Spring recall done.
-Driver is hard on the gas pedal. 29MPG before recall. ~22.5MPG after recall. MPG calculated manually. Fit MPG shows 25.5MPG.
-Daily commuter. 51miles per work day. Minimal weekend driving.
-Commute involves an uphill route for only about 1.5 miles. It's necessary to do 5.5k rpms @ 3rd gear to keep up with left lane traffic.

 

Easiest test is to floor it in a high gear at relatively low RPMs. If you get blue smoke out the back, then yes, you are burning oil. (Steam is just condensation; thick white smoke would be coolant). Very unscientific test and it will only show something if a pretty decent leak; the cat and muffler soak up a bunch of the stuff already.

Any good mechanic will be able to tell you if it's an oil leak and probably from where. Most common is a piston seal. I'm not an expert so I'd have to google to see what tests they'll do to find out.

 

Some soot in the tailpipe is normal. Do you see smoke coming out of the tailpipe?

I find that you have 37K and the last oil change at 20K a bit extreme. I haven't heard of fits going for more than 11K before the maintenance minder yelps. You've gone 17K by my reckoning...

When was the last time you checked the oil level? Mine uses maybe a fifth of a quart every 10K miles. Oil use up to a quart every 2,000 miles is "normal" I think (somewhere here is the honda threshold for defining excessive use). I need to know over how many miles your Fit used a quart before offering an opinion on your car's use.

1 quart over 17K is not excessive.

 

My bad. I meant 30k since the last oil change. Going to edit first post.

I'll have to check for smoke. I've been looking at the tailpipes of 2nd Gen Fits and mine has way more soot compared to what I've seen. Yeah...if you saw some weird guy looking at your Fit's tailpipe...it was probably me. lol.

Last time I checked oil level was at 30k miles after the oil change. Oil level was topped off. My last oil change before that was at around 20k, and my oil level before the 30k change was within the 2 dots.

 

so long as it's my car's...

1 quart over 7K isn't excessive. It's just an indication that you need to check your oil more frequently. I'd get it changed and monitor every gas fill until you have the oil-use/mile figured (it could have changed in the last few thousand miles).

If it were mine and used more than a quart every 2k I'd be taking it to Honda for a warranty fix (60K 5 year power train warranty).

 

Ho ho ho ok, so .. I'm sure where to start here. Your first post implies 7k miles since the last oil change, but your last post says it's been 30k miles since the last oil change. Suppose for a second that you actually are in fact saying the latter - that the oil has been in the car for 30k miles since you last changed it or looked at it.

It used to be the rule to change oil every 3k miles. Then 5k. Then 10, or some such. Now a computer measures it and supposedly they're pretty good at telling you when the oil has been turned into goo.

However, steve was shocked that you got 17k miles before the MM started telling you to change it - and it's even MORE crazy for it to go 30k miles. You went 30k miles between even checking the oil level.. ???!??!! Look, I don't mean to say you were foolish, since you were following the Honda instructions to look at the MM, however ... well, it was foolish from another perspective. If that oil's been in there 30k miles, chances are it's not doing much to lubricate the engine at all. I'd get it changed NOW.

I've always heard about people who never perform any maintenance on their car and then are shocked when the engine blows up at 50k miles. But I thought that was like an urban legend. You are (congratulations!) the first one I have run into.

Seriously, if it's been 30k miles you should change the oil. In fact if it's been 7k miles you can change it. That's about as long as I let it go. Unnecessary? Maybe, but it's cheap to do and since you're having an issue I would suggest it. In any case, once you change the oil you wil lhave a much better idea of if things are operating right or not.

 

i think you need to straighten up your facts.

Everyone is confused about when you last changed the oil, and what is your rate of consumption.
Still, even if you're down a quart over 5000miles that's not the end of the world, that's like $5? Put oil in your car btw if it's below the low mark.

That being said, maybe just try a different brand of oil, or a 5w-30 oil, before going nuts.

The fact that you have lower MPG is something more to be concerned about, as that is dollars/day in extra fuel use. But it may not be necessarily related to the oil problem. Might be a fuel quality issue or something else.

Both may just be a result of your self-described hard-driving.

 

"Last oil change was at 30k miles."

Quoted from the original post. Lots of difference between changed AT 30k compared to changed 30k ago.

Clifton

 

My 09 MT Sport has burned a quart every 5k since day one. Twice I’ve pointed this out at dealerships and both times I’ve been told that any consumption less than a quart per 1k is normal. So I guess it’s normal. Granted the consumption doesn’t seem to affect performance (my gas mileage is much better than the OP's) and it doesn’t seem to be getting worse (I’m now at about 77k), but this is my first new car, carefully broken in, and I had been looking forward to not having to deal with things like adding oil between oil changes. So much for that.

Otherwise, it’s been a reliable car, and I’m very happy with it.

But from Honda’s point of view they should know that my merely telling people about this amount of consumption has cost them two sales, one to my father and the other to a woman who works at a gallery where I exhibit.

 

This is the standard for any car (although I thought it was 1 qt/2k miles). Each car is a little different, enough to alter oil consumption a bit. Also how the car is broken-in is dependent on the individual driver. Maybe you were too careful. While I don't belong to the "thrash it to seat the rings" school, I believe in driving it "normally" avoiding full throttle starts and constant highway speeds for the first 500 miles.

1 qt every 5K is not excessive. They do put dip sticks on the things for a reason.

You could always change according to jiffy lube's recommendations, every 3k. Problem solved.

 

Fair enough and, as always in your posts, delivered with a winsome (and much-appreciated) sense of humor.

Still, yours doesn’t burn oil at this rate, and it seems from earlier threads that few others’ do either. And yes, a quart every 5k isn’t the end of the world, but of course the worry is that this is a harbinger of bad things to come. I’d like this car to keep going after the 200k mark, as did all my previous Hondas. Now I worry.

I suppose that what’s going on is that as these engines come off the line a small number are assembled with parts which, while within tolerance, match up in unfortunate ways. I, and the OP, seem to have won the lottery. And so I’ll live with it and hope that things don’t get worse.

That said, and to repeat, when I mention this sort of thing to people—especially to older people who had cars in the days when oil consumption was a sign of impending engine demise—it has a powerful impact on how they assess cars. My father had been a loyal Honda driver, beginning with a ‘78 Accord, then buying an ‘82 Accord for my mother, and then moving on to a Prelude for himself. None of them burned oil at this rate, and my experience has stopped him from buying a Fit (he’s retired and was looking for a simple, inexpensive car for the limited amount of driving he now does).

 

Let me add that before flooring it let off the accelerator completerly for 3 or 4 seconds then floor it so the engine has enough cylinder vacuum to pull oil into the cylinder. Ring leakage is the culprit in tghat case.
You didn't find any obvious signs of leakage but check around the cylinder head gasket; that can leak only when you drive the car so you won';t see puddles on the floor.
And exhaust pipes of tiodcay's vehicles are all black and soot covered; its theemissions controls including cat converter at work. If its oil burning related that blue cloud will tell you.

 

Do they have emissions shops in your state? Maybe see if someone can do a quick tailpipe test and look for elevated HC levels (compared to other Fits of the same model year). That would at least tell you if you're burning oil or leaking oil.

IDK how much shops charge to do compression/leakdown testing, you could have that done if you are indeed burning oil and want to know more about where it's coming from.

Or you can just add oil every 5k miles, really not much you can do as far as warranty repair work anyway I guess since it's within "normal levels".

 

I found that my car would lose about 1/2 quart of oil pretty quickly.. I began filling to the 1/2 way point on the dipstick and adding oil to that point when it would drop below that point.... I used 1/4 quart about every 3000 to 4000 miles doing it that way After owning a couple of British sports cars that would use a quart of oil every 500 miles when new, I am amused that someone would be upset about using 1/10 that much... Urban driving where a person jumps in their car and is immediately having to be on the throttle to mix with, to keep up with moving traffic before the engine has reached it's optimal operating temperature and numerous short trips is going to result in higher oil consumption than if driving easily until the engine warms up...

 

Sorry, but I find these statements incredible. Why do you think the car has a dipstick? Adding oil between changes at all is unacceptable? A million dollar Cessna or Piper may consume a quart in one long flight and no one complains.

Unless you run it out of oil, at 177,000 miles it will still perform just fine.

 

DAm sorry to hear that i change my oil every 3,500 fuk the dealer 5,000miles i was liek na ill do every 3,500

 

excellent.

 

Soot is not oil its cause by improper burn or knock. Oil will look like drops on the pipe and there might be a little build up that looks like soot. Synthetic oil in the tail pipe makes the pipe yellow in color.

The most oil I have used is 1/2 quart in 6000 miles and was full synthetic oil in the Fit. In my Civic I use a semi synthetic oil and never used a drop with 7500 oil changes.

 

It's normal to lose that much after 7k miles. I check my oil once a month to fill up 1/4 of a quart.

 

I very much hope that you’re right about this. As mentioned above, however, I’m worried because most Fits don’t seem to be losing oil at this rate. Mine, however, does. You nonetheless seem confident that I won’t have any major problems, even at 177k. Any thoughts on why mine’s losing oil and the rest aren’t, and why I shouldn’t be concerned about this difference? Again, I hope that you’re right. It’s just that I’d like to understand what’s going on, and especially why you feel there’s no cause for concern.