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over a litre of oil in under 5k miles?

wilpert

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Joined
6 Jun 2010
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2,332
Is that a bit high or should I expect this from a new car?

Ive covered 4,700 miles in 5 months and just had to top up with a litre of oil.
Do new engines use more or is that a myth?
 
Hi wilpert new engine can use a little more while thing bed in ,BMW reckon that 750 miles to a quart of oil in a new engine is acceptable just keep an eye on it :thumb:
 
It's a high performance engine and they do tend to use a little more oil than your average car, 5k miles for one litre is fine.

My brand new (now one year old) Golf uses a litre every 800 - 1000 miles, it's been the same from 0 miles to 56k that I'm on now, that works out around the same as my 996 and that 15 years old.
 
wilpert , that sounds good and well within Porsche tolerances , my 997.1 uses more than that and is still with the tolerances
:thumb: :grin:
 
That much consumption isn't worrying. But personally I wouldn't take much notice of the officially stated tolerances. Am sure they are as much about punting you out of the workshop when you're still in warranty as they are about what is truly within the range of acceptable.

The official Porsche guidelines say a litre every 1,000km / 600 miles is ok. Personally, I'd say that's very unlikely to be OK.

But in my view the main thing to watch for is change rather than the absolute value. If consumption appears to be increasing noticeably over time, that's a cause for concern. Meanwhile almost any level of consumption is fine if it's been doing it for long enough.

Hell, even a few litres per thousand miles would be fine if it's been like that for 50k miles. In practice, that's not really going to happen. But my point is that rapidly increasing rather than outright oil consumption is the best indicator of an issue.
 
I looked this morning, since my topping up with a litre has had a chance to settle.

It had dropped another bar, so my best guesstimate is it has used close to 1.5 litres in lets say 5000 miles or 1 litre per 3,300 miles, so I'm not going to fret about that.

I suppose the reason I got curious was that my old 996 didnt use anything between services.

Could it be the different type of engine would make a significant difference in oil consumption?
 
Could be, but not especially.

Any given engine type has variances. Mostly likely, you have one from the thirsty end of the spectrum but there's nothing actually wrong with it.

Flat engines in general do tend to use a little more oil than conventional engines because a little oil in the cylinders doesn't all drain into the sump when you switch off. That's also why they tend to smoke on start up.
 
wilpert said:
I suppose the reason I got curious was that my old 996 didnt use anything between services.

Same here, my 996s hardly needed a top up.
My Cayman uses a litre for every 3-4000 miles.
Below is page 266 from the manual, bottom line.
 

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Christ. 1.5-litres per 1,000km. Ridiculous!

That's 2.4-litres per thousand miles. I honestly can't see any healthy engine using that oil. That's a hell of a lot, probably about what my car's first engine was using just before it got a new block due to bore scoring.
 
OP,s post .. normal useage .. it gets lower as the engine wears in .

Some cars do use more oil than others , most people IMHO dont check it between services .

Dont over fill it though .. best to leave 1 bar down on gauge .. dont forget when topping up the oil is cold .. it will expand when hot and could push you into over fill when hot .

Porsche specs .. get out of jail free card .. if not above that figure then its fine .. alters slightly if you complain about it smokeing though :D
 
infrasilver said:
It's a high performance engine and they do tend to use a little more oil than your average car, 5k miles for one litre is fine.

My brand new (now one year old) Golf uses a litre every 800 - 1000 miles, it's been the same from 0 miles to 56k that I'm on now, that works out around the same as my 996 and that 15 years old.

Blimey 56k in 1 year, I hope it's got a comfy seat!
 
It does vary a lot between cars and also down to driving style don't forget- all figures mentioned here are all ok.

High consumption should not be a huge worry as long as it's not ridiculous, it is a performance car and will use more oil.

My car has done 6000 miles+ in 18 months and I have used around 0.8 litres of oil in that time to keep it topped up and the bars full or just one off full at all times.

I think that's very reasonable.
 

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