98 SC2 drinks oil like gas!

Have had a horrendous experience with our SC2 and oil comsumption ...
was wondering if anyone else had this experience ? If you did and your
reading this I'd love to hear what you did about it or if the dealer /
manufacture was receptive to correcting the problem.

Thanks
Skydude

 

My 98 SC2 will burn a bit more than a quart about every 1000 miles give or
take. I have heard that a bad PCV will cause this. Mine looks fairly clean
but I haven't got around to changing it yet. I am watching this thread to
see if you get a better answer. I am still using the 5w30 and am thinking
about switching to 10w30 on the next oil change.

 

Ours started BURNING oil around 38K , by 45 it was major .... went
thru hell and back with the local dealer here in Pougkeepsie, NY to
get them to even acknowledge that this is a problem. I was told that
a new car burning oil was acceptable ... excuse me but I'm not a
rocket scientist ...but I thought cars were supposed to burn GAS ...
..NOT OIL ! I have a Nissan Sentra ... with 178K on it ... you put 4
quarts of oil in ... run it for 4K and you get 4 quarts out ! Never
had a problem ... and I was under the asssumption that oil is there to
lubricate not burn. Maybe it's me ... ?

Anyway ... they did a head job on it .... yada yada... made it majorly
difficult for us. After the head job ... it was good for about 25K
then it started all over again... I've not had the time, energy or
will to do battle with this dealer all over again .. we're just
getting rid of it... and writing it off as a horrendous product. I
was wondering if there is any kind of permanet fix for this but after
browsing this newgroup and a few others I've seen nothing that looks
promising ... so getting rid of it is what I think if going to be our
solution.

Signed .....

One person that will NEVER buy a Saturn ... Or let anyone I know buy a
Saturn!

 

Ours started BURNING oil around 38K , by 45 it was major .... went

You live in POK?!

I'm over the mountain in Kerhonkson!

The permanent fix is to rebuild the engine and use different piston rings(other
than Hastings; as Saturn uses Hastings rings from the factory and that is the
cause of the consumption).

Jamie

 

I bought mine used as a repo, so it doesn't surprise me. I think it has
about 90k miles.

 

'97 SL with 122k miles: burns 1qt each 1K miles.

 

Warmer, warmer... mine, a '95 SL2 with 114K of, mostly highway,
and mostly spirited (I live in LA), miles on it burnt more than a
quart of oil every fill-up (~400 miles). I have it since new, and the
oil has been changed quite regularily (every 3-4K miles). I consider
myself lucky as the only thing that I had to fix on the car has been a
watter pump (original rusted and I replaced it with an after-maket one
with a nice all aluminum body), and a couple of upper engine mount
replacements (well there is a bit of "perspiration" around (manual)
trany seal, and the clutch is getting a bit too slipery for my taste,
but neither is an emergency). Even though the car really drank oil,
the performance drop over the years was not noticable for me (it was
lackluster when new... it is still so today), and I would still get,
as I always would, 30-31 MPG. So much for the background.
The cure for the oil burning (you can exhale now) has been
simple... I switched to good/better oil... Vavoline Max Life. Still
5W30, but the oil loss has been cut in 3rd... now I'm burning "only"
slightly more than 1/4 of a quart every fill-up (which would translate
to about a quart evey 1.5K+ miles), and that I can live with.

/Mariusz

 

I have a '91 SL that burns a lot of oil! I didn't buy it new, I bought
it off of my Uncle. I burn about a quart of oil every fill up. The car
has 184,000 miles on it though. I've been reading online about a
product that's supposed to stop burning oil. It's called Auto-RX. Go
to www.auto-rx.com and try it. I've read about many Saturns that swear
by it to stop oil consumption, so I'm trying it. It's $25 a bottle,
but it's supposed to work wonders!

That's just my 2 cents. I hope this additive works though!

Peace.
Jim

 

....nothing like a rebuild with new parts to stop the oil usage. There's no
amount of snake oil that is going to restore worn parts. Save your 25
bucks.

 

Skydude, I guess you aren't aware of the long history of heavy oil
consumption in Saturns. When I started to read this newsgroup around
'97, it was full of such complaints. I think that eventually car
owners had to prove their cars got less than a 1000 miles per quart
before Saturn would fix the engine under warranty. If it's out of
warranty -- you can basically forget about any coverage. Saturn
began building their engines better in the mid-nineties, but it
appears yours still went bad. I wish you luck.

r.b.

 

I have a '98 SC2 that was built in '98. It has 48,000 miles and zero oil
burning so far....