oil consumption follow up

john valetutto

Well-Known Member
39
5
Hello,

A month or two ago I made a thread about excessive oil consumption on my 2012 civic si. I got allot of feedback and I really appreciated everyone's advice and input. My old thread could be found here:

http://9thcivic.com/forum/threads/2012-civic-si-oil-consumption.15724/

I have a minor update and was wondering if anyone could give me some sage advice on what to do?

Today I decided to just spend the $200 and get a compression and leakdown test just to be sure of what was causing the oil loss. The honda tech said my compression was pretty good at around 200 for each cylinder. Also he said the leakdown test wasn't too bad either with only 7% leaking on each cylinder. He also showed me some pictures he took of the valves covered in carbon and a vertical scratch in one of the cylinder walls. He said the scratch could attribute to some of the oil loss. He also said there's no way to tell how bad the scratch is without removing the head which is a 6 hour job and he can't guarantee that it could be honed out.

what do you guys think? should I just keep an eye on the oil level and just ride it out? can I use some kind of fuel additive to try to remove some of that carbon on the valves?

Here's a link to the pictures the tech gave me:


View: https://imgur.com/a/jvBREbH
 
I was thinking about seafoam. Do you know how safe it is to use? Is there any way it could damage my engine?
 
I've not seen anyone have issues when following the instructions.
 
Yes.did they change the label or something?

I used sea foam on my car (ba18c not my si) about a couple weeks ago. Sprayed it into my vacuum lines while the car was running and a huge white cloud came out of my tail pipe. Really tripped my neighbor out it was pretty cool.
 
The scratch can’t be too bad if all cylinders have the same/similar compression readings so I wouldn’t worry about that now. Your main focus should be to track down the oil issue
 
The pistons/rings etc are what Honda replaces when the car fails the consumption tests. A fine scratch in the wall isn’t causing your issue (if you have one). You still don’t know if the previous oil change was done correctly. You don’t know how much you’re burning per 1k miles and so on. There are threads where dealerships put too much and too little into the car when an oil change was done. Don’t do anything until you see what is really happening.
 
I did the oil change myself last time. When I do it again in another 1k miles or so ill keep a log on how much oil is being lost per 1k miles. If I'm not mistaken there's roughly a quart difference between the two notches on the dip stick right?
 
correct. Just look at the dip stick at 1k miles. You won't have to do an oil change. As long as it was at the upper mark when you did the change, see where it is at 1k miles in comparison.
 
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