03 ford focus burning oil

irelandspurs

Focus has 112,000 miles on it now and were topping oil up regularly after a week or 2 its gone from max on dipstick to not even showing on it.Its not leaking from anywhere and you can smell it burning.Am i right in thinking its the valve stem seals and would this be expensive to fix on a focus.It has been like this for awhile now.

shamwari

Ideally you would need a compression test performed to see if one or more of the cylinders is low on compression. Oil consumption on the scale you mention would probably be more than stem seals.

A simple more crude test you could do is to remove the dipstick when you start the engine and see how much vapour is blown out. Lots of oily stuff would not be a good sign.

Assumimg the engine is weak, a 2nd hand replacement would probably be a more effective option than a full rebuild of what you have.

irelandspurs

Thanks for the reply,i also noticed when i last serviced the car that oil was around one of the plugs quite alot,but checked again the other day and all 4 are dry.

Plug

Try a compression test but your defiantly sure its not leaking? Your mileage is not too high and them engines are fairly good, do you service it regularly and do you drive hard? foot fully down a lot of the time and high revs?
second hand engine, timing belt kit and maybe a clutch + a release bearing = $$$

irelandspurs

Yeah def not leaking no sign of leakage under car or on driveway.Wouldn't mind getting secondhand engine with less miles on.I don't drive it often its the wifes car but i doubt she drives it hard.

Gary ITR

Would I be right in saying that the valve stem seals would also lead to a loss in compression? So doing a compression test won't pinpoint the problem?

Slidey

Nah, the valve stem oil seals would have no affect on compression.

crosshair1

Give it a few hard revs (up to 6k) and see how much blue smoke you have, it can only be due to engine wear or a breather problem.
If the breather sys is ok then its s/h engine time.
Compression tests or cylinder leakage tests are not guaranteed indicators of oil consumption problems.

irelandspurs

crosshair1 wrote: »

Give it a few hard revs (up to 6k) and see how much blue smoke you have, it can only be due to engine wear or a breather problem.
If the breather sys is ok then its s/h engine time.
Compression tests or cylinder leakage tests are not guaranteed indicators of oil consumption problems.

Yeah there is alot of smoke that comes out seems to have a slight blue colour to it but hard to tell,Will get christmas out the way and get someome to check it out

Avns1s

There is an issue with those Focus engines whereby if the correct 5W-30 oil is not used in them, they will start to burn oil. A few services with the proper oil can often bring it back a bit bit rarely in my experience will stop it altogether.

With that mileage, you can expect some degree of oil usage.

My suggestion is to service with the correct oil, and monitor frm there.

irelandspurs

Avns1s wrote: »

There is an issue with those Focus engines whereby if the correct 5W-30 oil is not used in them, they will start to burn oil. A few services with the proper oil can often bring it back a bit bit rarely in my experience will stop it altogether.

With that mileage, you can expect some degree of oil usage.

My suggestion is to service with the correct oil, and monitor frm there.

Haven't used anything else other than 5w-30

Andrew Campbell

blue smoke from the exhaust when accellerating hard at high engine revs is the piston rings....A big puff of oil when you slow down sharply on the gears is caused by the valve stem seals.... either job is not for the DIYer or cheap.... also could be worn seals in the turbo if the engine has one.