Why do Toyota engines consume oil ? And how to prevent it?

so you ever wonder why toyota's modern toyotas are burning oil you read this all over the internet people are complaining people are having issues well welcome to the car care nut channel my name is amd and in today's video we're going to talk about why modern toyotas are burning oil what are the stages of oil consumption that's actually the official name for it and most importantly what you can do to help not get to that excessive oil consumption but before we get started if you're new to the channel welcome consider subscribing to the channel check out some of my other videos if you're a returning subscriber thank you so much for watching another one of my videos and without further ado let's dig right in let's first talk about what it is oil consumption is the official word and most people when they when their cars start burning oil or consuming oil they look for leaks they look for this right folks there is no leak that is the typical leaks with toyotas that will cause that large a quart or two three every thousand miles that would be a giant puddle everywhere you go oil leaks typically will drop a little bit of the oil but nothing like two three quarts and people will say well wait a second my car is burning oil or cons using oil but i don't see blue smoke folks and newer cars catalytic converters do such a good job you won't see that typical blue smoke behind you unless you really accelerate hard then you might see it but again at that point you're driving probably on the highway and won't see it so according to toyota and this is their specification and this is not just toyota folks this is all manufacturers if you burn one court every 1200 miles that is the maximum allowed consumption so if you burn a little bit less than a quart every 1200 miles that is normal believe it or not i know i'm with you it sounds uh not normal but that's normal in today's cars however there are a lot of things that you can do to prevent that let's do a little math before we get into it if you burn a quart every 1200 miles let's say you have a car that takes 45 quarts as most toyotas take this much by the time you get to your 5 000 mile oil change hopefully you'll have no oil in the car and if you push that to 10 000 miles you will be negative 5 quarts so i don't know how that's normal but actually it is and we're going to dig into that right now let's talk about why cars burn oil these days and somebody will jump in the comments and say my 1997 camry has four or five six hundred thousand miles doesn't burn a drop and it's the best car and toyota quality has gone down and the world's about to end let's go back to horse and buggy well that's not the case believe it or not all these oil consumption problems have to do with one thing that we all love emission regulations believe it or not it does this is a piston from a 2.4 liter 2azfe engine that has a campaign from toyota this is one example of cars that have this engine it's 2007 2009. toyota covered this for their owners they took care of them there was an issue they wanted to keep people happy so we ended up replacing pistons and rings the rings are right here now the reason modern cars burn oil is very simple low tension rings piston rings in the olden days these rings had high tension they put too much tension they're very stiff and strong they have a lot of tension so when they go up and down they they're really effective at cleaning that oil film especially the the last ring so every will have three piston rings two compression and one oil control ring right there you can see the three of them so the the high tension rings actually they're not called that they're just normal rings not low tension rings they they do a pretty sufficient job at staying in that high tension all the time where they don't let go of course there are exceptions to that from normal wear and tear and neglect but low tension rings and the idea behind it is if you put less tension on the cylinder wall as this piston is going up and down you drive down the street this guy is going up and down making all the magic inside the engine if you put low tension rings you're gonna have less drag the less drag you have on your car the less load will be on the engine the less load the less emissions everybody's happy the epa is happy and everybody is one big happy family however that big happy family goes really unhappy when the miles and the age add up which takes us to the stages of oil consumption stage one i'm gonna call it stage it's actually this is something i'm making phase one stage one whatever you want to call it but step number one the oil control rings because they don't have very strong tension to begin with and they have holes that some of the compression air pushes them out to help them open they start sticking from oil debris getting on it's a little bit of sludge and we'll talk about that in a second you get a little oil sludge that starts these these strings that are used to expand and contract and they're very free now they start sticking they don't have enough tension to push themselves out against that debris that's around them in the ring land the ring line by the way is where they sit on the piston well they start sticking a little bit now when when the piston comes down they don't scrape the they don't scrape that oil that are on the walls on the cylinder walls well you start burning a little bit of oil and most people will not notice this because you're supposed to check your oil every gas full up hopefully honestly we don't do that i don't do that i don't expect you to do that we all don't do that we check our oil every once in a while but not every gas fell up well the stage one you're gonna start burning maybe a quart by the time you get to your oil change it's okay it's not the end of the world everybody's like well you know it's a problem but it's not really a problem until we go into stage two now stage two is when these strings just seize up completely now they're all gummed up with oil sludge and debris and everything and they become just a solid non-moving piece now there's no expansion there's no scraping that extra oil in the cylinder wall nothing is happening it's just like you have no no oil control rings well that's when the problems start that's when you start burning a court every thousand miles two course every thousand miles and things get out of control and the typical thing with this is people come to the dealership all the time i take a turn and my car dies or starts rattling or every time i break my oil light comes on because you have such a small amount of oil left in the oil pan every time you hit the brakes all that oil goes to the front and the oil pickup has nothing to pick up that said the engine ran out of oil momentarily and of course that accelerates the wear of the engine rapidly because now you have no oil and people don't notice this until the oil light comes on folks the oil light is not the indication that the oil is low it basically is telling you in a human sense my heart skipped a beat that's not good we don't want to get to that point which takes us to when disasters really happen [Music] stage three so this oil control ring now that is seized eventually is going to move in a position where it's sticking out too much and now it's scraping the oil on one side but because it's sticking and it's not moving it's gonna start scraping at that same spot over and over and over until it wears the cylinder wall the problem when that happens is it the car starts burning oil at a massive amount because now we're no longer having oil burning issues because of the oil ring that it's stuck we have oil getting past now we have grooved the cylinder wall where oil just stays there and gets burned every time the piston comes down it goes in the combustion chamber and gets burned and burned and at that point you're gonna eventually wear the cylinder wall so much that now the compression rings also can't keep the compression because now they have a little almost like a passage where air goes through it and no longer can keep everything sealed then you start with misfires and it really goes downhill from there now the car is gets to a point where it's like it's not just burning oil it's undrivable now we can't pass emissions catalytic converters start failing spark plugs start failing and everything goes downhill from there so at this point everybody is like the car that i'm driving i don't want to drive it anymore i'm selling it go buying a horse and a buggy and that's what i'm gonna do because i'm very worried but you hang on tight with me hang bear with me here for a minute while we talk about what could have been done to prevent all this mess folks what could have been done to prevent this oil changes timely and with good oil it's as simple as that it all comes down to oil again we have a problem with burning oil because of oil most manufacturers have went to including toyota went to the long oil changes 10 000 miles one year life is good low maintenance cost cars this and that but if you really go into the fine print if you would you will discover that you are the one who is misinformed not them playing games or lying to you for example did you know that if you make repeated short trips in temperatures below 32 degrees fahrenheit or freezing you no longer qualify for the 10 000 mile oil changes did you know if you have extensive idling like staying in heavy traffic that's extensive idling you're stuck in traffic every day you live in a major city you're always stopped in traffic do you know that that qualifies for uh five thousand mile oil changes not ten thousand miles no more and the biggest offenders of this ten thousand mile one year oil change are people who don't drive their cars much number one they always make repeated trips of short distance never letting their engine warm up and the second thing is they go by miles they drive 3 000 miles a year they forget the time they keep going 3 000 miles a year until we get to 10 000. we're talking over three years on the same oil folks it all comes down on how you maintain your car and i'm not just talking from some paper reading to you i will share with you my personal experience with me and my family member i had a 2012 camry with a 2 ar fe engine i bought it brand new a week later a family member bought the exact same car with the exact same everything i changed my oil every three to four thousand miles the most five 000 miles that's what i did i used toyota oil or mobile one i used an original filter i drove my car very hard i drive a lot and i'm always in a hurry i work 80 hours a week that's how it is so i drove my car a lot but i did the oil change between three to five thousand miles my family member did their oil change every 10 000 miles but they went over the year because they didn't drive the car much by the time i got to 92 000 miles they have only put 49 thousand at 92 000 miles my car did not burn a drop at the 5000 mile oil change or whatever i do the oil change i check the oil it's full it's exactly the same as when i did the last oil change my family member however they never made it to the oil change because the car started burning two quarts every thousand miles and eventually they got rid of the car because they were sick and tired of it because there was cylinder wall damage and it was a done deal i didn't do anything special i actually they they in picture took care of their car better they washed it it was always clean my car was always driving in the middle of winter covered in salt i didn't have much time to wax and clean and do it wasn't my daily driver i did not have time to start waxing and cleaning if you if i show you both cars parked next to each other you would think their car is by far a better car but that's not the case because they didn't do their oil changes they didn't look at i'm driving these short trips and they live around here they drive these short trips repeated oh i'm just gonna go to grocery store and come back and when it's 15 degrees outside fahrenheit sure but what about the oil change you went two years three years on the same oil that's what does this that oil just sitting there every time you start your car cold you have fuel raw fuel going into your oil there's nothing you can do about that that's how gasoline engines are that's why oil changes have mileage and time you also don't want that oil to just sit there with fuel forever you want to change it because that fuel that small amount of fuel that comes into the oil is going to break it down and you're going to want to get it out and refresh it it's not just about miles it's about time the time is very important here folks i love you all and i want your cars never to burn oil but if you don't listen if you not listen to me read your owner's manual dig deep into it understand look at your driving conditions and people will say well i only did this twice it doesn't matter that's how they that's what the owner's manual is telling you people fight with me on comments and everywhere emails i don't want to do my oil change every 5 000. i want to do it 10 000 the engineers know what they're talking about you're just a fool on youtube well let me rephrase that i could be a fool on youtube but i'm also the one tearing into these engines and finding the damage and the engineers did not tell you to go do that they told you if you do these conditions you should change your oil earlier that's that's just what they did i'm not saying this out of i didn't pull this out of my pocket folks i do this because i care about you i want you to do what's best for your car it's the second largest investment you made please do the cheap insurance oil changes this is what's going to save your car from having oil burning problems now some cars some engines like the 2a zfe there was a problem with it that's why toyota said you know what we're going to take care of you because you bought a toyota they did that's what toyota does for their customers that's why it's an awesome company but other engines that are burning oil they're burning oil from neglect not because they have a problem casing point the 2ar fe engine notorious for oil burning when you don't take care of it horrible worse than the 2azfe the 2.4 liter that had the campaign or some people call it a recall it's not a recall it's a campaign it's a customer support program the 2ar is notorious to destroy the cylinder wall when this happens to it when the oil control ring sees and i've seen so many of them seize you pull it apart guess what cylinder wall it's chewed up it's gone it's done there's no fixing that you need a whole new engine folks it all comes down to oil changes and let me tell you another thing it's not going to happen overnight it's not going to be oh my god i i just watched this video i have a new car and i'm actually doing this and i just realized i destroyed my car i got to trade it and go by now it doesn't happen like that we're talking if you've been consistently doing this for five six years is when things get really dire like that but i always encourage you to reverse course and start watching your oil changes this makes a huge difference and you know what here's another suggestion for you instead of watching and thinking and did i do this wait did i do that did this qual why don't we just take out the gray areas and make it black and white for you change your oil every five thousand miles six months and you'll never have to worry about it why why make the guest game i've always told you guys and some some of you unfortunately have fought me on this it is not worth it in the end it is your car it is your investment it is your decision but please hear me out when i tell you 5 000 mile oil changes six months whichever comes first play it safe don't don't take your car to the edge just because and before we wrap this video up i want to share with you a few things now you just watched this video you just realized this you you're looking for this because your car is actually burning oil it's starting to now we talked about stage one two and three if you're at stage three which could be easily found spark plug comes out we put a camera we inspect the cylinder if it's scratched it's done there's nothing no helping that you have to take the engine apart replace the block toyotas you can't machine the cylinder walls on the newer engines it's just the way it is but if you are at stage one or two we have had good success and this is not guaranteed 100 with oil system cleaners unfortunately i can't recommend a specific brand because the brands we use at the dealership they're not available for retail sales however do your research look around there's a lot of good products out there for oil cleaning it's the kind of product that you add to the oil you let the engine run for 20-30 minutes shut it off drain the oil do a full oil change all those cleaners are hard detergents they're gonna come to this ring that is seized and they're going to attack that gum and gunk that are stuck here and it's going to free it up if it frees it up a little bit it's going to start moving again and then you follow it up by good oil maintenance now is going to actually free up and it's going to improve your your oil burning if not take care of it completely now there's no guarantees because depends how severe this is and you don't want to have this detergent like some people will say and have tried and unfortunately had other problems well i'm going to just do the oil cleaning every oil change well the problem is you put these high like strong detergents in the engine now you're going to start attacking seals sealers that form in place gasket and it kind of gets counterproductive because now the engine will not burn oil but it'll leak everywhere so do it but don't overdo it with oil engine oil cleaners if you would try it once if it improves a little bit wait a couple oil changes then try it again don't overdo it either because we've seen people overdo it and problems started and you don't want that either one thing i never want you to do and please hear me out here if you've watched this video this long i want you to hear this some people when their modern engines will start burning oil okay so let's say your car takes 0w20 it's burning oil well i'm just going to put 530. sure you might slow the oil burning rate but it's still burning it's that's not a solution just like when your radiator leaks you don't put stop leak that stop leak and clog everything else in my opinion you fix the radiator the engine is burning oil fix the problem not mask it putting heavier oil yeah sure it might slow the consumption but that's not a fix i don't think that is a fix i'd rather you invest in oil cleaning because it actually could solve the issue or you can use the right oil for the car and not have oil burning i just wanted to bring this up to your attention because you're going to read this everywhere this worked with the older style engines but the newer stuff you're just masking the problem you're not fixing it i highly encourage that you try to fix it right i hope this video was helpful informative and i know some of you will not like what i said in this video and i say this for you guys please follow the maintenance take care of your car some people take care of their cars but because of these little gray areas they end up actually not taking care of their car folks oils it's cheap oil filters are cheap i always recommend you use a good quality oil filter the best quality oil filter is the original one the best quality oil is the original oil that you can buy from the dealership or mobile one or casserole or any of the good brands out there it doesn't have to be one brand oil is oil in the end and please do me one last favor before i let you go there don't buy high very expensive oil and i've seen this also very very expensive oil that promises the world oh you can do your oil change every 15 and 20 000 miles you're much better off buying the cheapest most generic most horrible oil and changing it every three thousand miles then you are going with this fancy very expensive oil and going fifteen twenty thousand that's not a good idea with toyotas maybe it works for others but we're talking about toyotas here that doesn't work very well i hope you learned something new in this video i hope it was informative and helpful for you if you liked it give it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing checking out some of my other videos may the lord bless you and keep you and you have a wonderful day

Channel: The Car Care Nut

Views: 328,605

Rating: 4.8861356 out of 5

Keywords: why do toyota engines consume oil, toyota oil burning, toyota oil burning problem, 2az fe engine, 2ar-fe engine, prius oil burning problems, toyota oil consumption, toyota hybrid, should you buy a toyota hybrid, toyota engine problem, toyota piston ring, fix oil burning, how to take care of your car, how to take care of your toyota, toyota maintenance schedule, toyota cold weather, fix your toyota, car burning oil, how to fix oil consumption, car diy, engine oil cleaner

Id: v4JS7PybV2k

Length: 24min 32sec (1472 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/basanso]

Check your own oil and change it regularly. At 235k in my 2010, I burn an extra quart because of previous ownership. I have to add 1qt every 2.5k and change it every 5k. It's pitch black every change. Like with humans, good maintenance will keep your baby alive.

[u/vwatchrepair]

I bought a 2012 V from a used car lot. Car is beautiful. Oil was full and clean the day I bought it.

Not long after we went on a trip. 400 miles one way. By the time we got back the oil level was just under the bottom dog in the dip stick. I've put 20,000 miles on it since.(now at 136,000 miles) Owned it about a year now. I've cleaned the entire egr system, replaced PCV, cleaned intake, new spark plugs. This thing STILL consumes oil at the same rate. No smoke either. Seriously, why is this not a recall?? If I was no mechanically inclined, this thing would've been dead within a month of owning it. I'm constantly monitoring the oil, especially after trips on the interstate.

[u/Siddabear]

Im at 260k on my 17, changing the oil ever 10-20k miles. So far I have had no noticeable consumption between changes, and even at 20k in the engine is comes out dark brown, but not blackened.

[u/mechapoitier]

That’s a solid video, especially the part about how to reverse stage 1 or 2 (as he describes) damage with oil system cleaners and flushes.

If you get to the worst case scenario (but not yet eating cylinder wall metal) there are more drastic things you can do that are remarkably easy, but changing the oil and doing a flush every dozen oil changes or so would probably keep your engine perfect.

[u/brentonstrine]

Someone post a TL:DR;

[u/slimslamburger]

What oil change intervals do you all use? I’m right at 5k in my 2013. Picked up a filter and oil today but I do t have the tool to remove the filter

[u/Roxxyy_c1]

Every how many miles?

[u/smokey9413]

So, question. I have a 2010 with somewhere around 119k to 120k miles, bought last July with about 115k and when I finally had my mechanic look at it in November to make sure everything is in good shape they said everything is good. Am I getting close to needing the oil changed? Is it bad if I wait until a dash light comes on? I commute about 12ish miles to work every day on the highway