Failed oil consumption test
 

Well I failed my oil consumption test. At 872 miles I was down 1.9 quarts and Nissan called the test before I went the full 1500 miles.
The solution: a new short block using my old heads. Total milage is 2451. Am I made whole this way or am I being screwed?
Thank you for any advice.

If that were my car I'd push for a brand new crate engine. My car has almost 14k miles on it and it doesn't burn any oil between changes.

Since the oil consumption has been traced to a probably poor piston ring seal? The heads should be tested for adverse wear or defect if none is found then they should be fine. The block is the real issue which I guess they have determined to be a problem.

Hmm.... doesn't sound too excessive. I was down 1.5 quarts after 1000 miles. Normal to me. Just kept an eye on it and topped up as needed. These rings are really hard and take quite some time to seat. Therefore.... oil usage. I now have almost 8000 miles and it has slowed in consumption, but not stopped.

My personal belief is that it will continue to use oil up to and beyond 10000 miles.

(Maybe a dealer looking to make some money on warranty work that may not be needed?)

Apparently one quart per 1500 miles is too much. You may want to have yours checked too.

Nothing wrong with my engine. And sorry, mine was down 1.5 quarts after 2500 miles.

I'm down almost a qt after 700 miles. Going to the dealer Monday.

I would have thought they would swap the entire longblock rather than pay the dealership for tranferring the heads over to the new block. Souldn't be a big deal or anything. As long as the engine was never starved of oil, your heads should be fine and past their break in.

You should be able to go hard on the motor from day one to seat the rings and prevent this from happening again.

Yes, thank you, some common sense finally! :tup:

It's not so much the rings, it's gaining a plateau finish on the cylinder wall oil retention "valleys." Every block that rolls off Nissan's assembly line is pre-honed and plateau honed to an extent, but there is still some potential to leave the oil cross hatches too shallow or glazed over due to improper break in.

I'm going to leave it at my experience of 4 years of building several V6 engines for boosted applications... The problem is not with people refusing to break in their engine too hard, it's with people who are too easy or otherwise follow a bad engine break-in procedure. For the first 50 miles once your engine reaches operating temperature, it is critical to A) NOT idle the engine at all if possible, shut it off if you get stuck at a light B) load the cylinder walls so force is exerted from the rings (have some fun, but don't beat on the engine or let your oil and/or coolant get too hot) and C) engine brake every chance you get to accomplish B) even when you are decelerating and D) do NOT cruise at a constant speed at all if possible - take the hilliest route you can if applicable so you can vary the load on your engine. Continue this procedure for the first several hundred miles, but the no idling rule becomes less important after the first 50-100 miles or X number of revolutions.

That's all I have to say; I can promise you that you will not have an oil consumption problem again if you do the above.

I like your explanation, and if you'd like to discuss this? Feel free to send me a Pm I've built plenty of motors, Back on Topic. :tup:

I feel ya. I'll keep it more on-topic but I just find it amusing how many reports of this come from the Z community. People are probably just too nice to their new babies. Nothing wrong with that, but I wish I could redefine what "being nice" is for some people. Tough love is how I would describe it.

But on the real, I'd be demanding a whole new engine. There ARE some potential side effects of poor ring sealing on the engine as a whole.

Actually, I'm surprised somebody hasn't had a bearing failure during all of this. Fuel dilution in oil is pretty much the #1 killer of bearings. To that point, you could have some excessive wear in your valvetrain due to lack of oil protection and potential dropped oil pressure due to lower end wear.

Point these things out to your dealer tech or service manager. It's perfectly logical especially if the consumption has been on-going.

You can point these out to the service manager and such but they will most likely not change out the entire engine unless absolutely necessary. Nissan is going to approve the minimum amount of work required to fix the car. Until that motor is actualy pulled apart and checked to see if more damage has occured they will most likely stick to the original repair.

Well, to properly check every single camshaft/eccentric shaft journal, cap, etc for roundness and wear would take some serious labor. The OP should at least force them to do a thorough inspection of every component in the engine. And that plus proper reassembly (and associated risk) is probably just as expensive due to labor costs as getting a new long block or whole crate engine put in.

Nissan has to reimburse the dealer for labor and parts costs, so they'll probably go with the option least likely to produce a repeat incident. Which that is, who knows.

If it were me, I'd replace the shortblock and be OK with it, but I don't even trust the dealer to change my oil, yet alone the lower end of my motor. That's my concern more so than whether the replacement lower end fixes the issue.

Nissan will only pay the dealer however long nissan says it takes to repair a part, thats how warranty works. Generaly repairs like that take longer than what nissan pays and isnt beneficial to the dealer at all. So they will take whichever route is easier. Id want a new engine too but I dont think its going to happen.

PS: I broke my engine in hard and havent had any oil consumption problems. only time my car ever consumed some oil was before the first oil change and it was only like half a quart.

A new crate engine on a 2009-2010 must be in the order of $10k, so I'd be waving the option of going to court in Nissan's face if it were me. They're likely to cooperate on a repair that serious.

The minimum proper repair here is to have the cylinder heads checked out or at least have the inevitable varnish from an oil-consuming engine cleaned out of them to avoid any future oiling issues. I'd be happy if Nissan paid the dealership to do either.

I failed the test and the Thousand Oaks dealer got'eme a new engine.

I broke my engine in fairly hard from the day I got it. I haven't had any problems yet. Knock on wood.

I'm know nothing about building engines and won't claim to.
I bought my 09 with 25 miles on it and drive it normal it's never
been redlined or past a 110. It's now at 6700 miles had two mobil 1
oil changes and has never had oil added in between changes.

I feel for the guys with this problem it's gotta suck.
But IMHO these engines shouldn't burn oil under "normal conditions"

Now under adverse conditions like tracking and dogging the crap at of it
i can't say.

Thank you all for the advice. I like the entire crate engine idea best, even though Nissan wants to try a short block solution instead. But they have not internally inspected the parts. Hence, my gut tells me replacing the entire engine makes more sense. You guys seem to be suggesting that as well. Can somebody please coach me on how to convince the service manager to replace the entire engine. I sense they are reluctant to do this. Advice?

when nissan replaced my engine in my 350z for the exact same problem, they replaced the entire long block. but that was 6 years ago.

Back to the OP... I find it unlikely that I would feel comfortable allowing the dealership to swap my heads onto a shortblock. I would be pushing for a longblock swap. I would want a motor assembled entirely at the factory.

Car has a total of 2451 miles. and burns 2 quarts within 879 miles of a burn check.

something stinks here and its not burnt oil.

let them put the heads on, but make them extend the warranty out to 100000 miles.

Well, a problem is a problem... but.. if the car burns too much oil, and it ends up being a real/major problem... it's at no cost to the owner correct?

I'm assuming Nissan warranty will cover it 100%? Especially if the car is stock?

I ask because my 335i has had multiple fuel pump failures... but they've cost me nothing except trips to the dealer (which is expensive in itself, since time is money; but it hasn't cost me any cash to get them fixed)

I have been involved in motorsport for 43 years, and the WarmandSCSI description of breakin procedure is what I use for road and competition engines. You need sufficient combustion pressure behind the rings to get them to knock the highpoints (it is a relative term - measured in 10th of 1000th of an inch) off the bore so the rings seal properly and stop sucking oil into the combustion chamber and burning it.

The trick is not to let the engine "labour" under mid-range revs and high load and also not to let it idle or run at constant load for very long.

Whenever I pick up a new vehicle, it always gets a 200+ klick run and I like to pick a road that has a few hills and lets me use the gearbox - it is about keeping the revs up (3000 +), keeping the load up, but never WOT. My Z34 never used a drop of oil from day one - purchased in May 2009 and has covered 28,000klics so far, and run maybe a 800-1000 track klicks - still does not use oil. The Subaru Impreza STI I had before the Zed covered 180,000 klicks in 7 years (and maybe 35-40 track days) and it never used oil. The Impreza WRX I had before that was the same. The GM Small block engined car I had before that was the same .....

My competition engines are all broken in on an engine dyno, 15-20 minutes at 2000rpm to bed the cam and followers, stop the engine and let it cool overnight, re-torque the heads and then 20 minutes of 60-90% load at 60-75% rpm's (all varied, never constant load), to make sure the rings are thorougly bedded, then finish off with a couple of balls-out power pulls. If we don't like the results, we might then play with fuel and timings to get max torque, then it goes into the race car.

Please keep the thread ON TOPIC. This thread has been cleaned this time but next time it'll be locked.

OP, I'm sorry to hear this. Keep us posted what the Nissan dealer decides to do. As Mike said, let them change whatever they feel necessary but try to get them to extend the warranty till 100,000 miles. You'll have peace of mind for a long time. Keep us posted :tiphat:

I think you missed something. What are the all parts did you used? Before I can give my advice I want to know all of them. I will wait for your further response. :D

I agree with you on some points but I don't understanding how it doesn't cost you anything? The guy who did the pumps for me did charge me, I think I should as him to refund.

At first I was gonna go "oh here we go again, somebody claiming you can beat the snot out of it from day one". But your post is spot-on. It's all about varying the RPM as much as possible and not driving at constant speeds. And the owner's manual says exactly that! (Of course almost nobody reads the manual anyway :shakes head:)

Funny...I broke the engine in properly and only once or twice brought it over 6000 during break-in and whaddya know, it doesn't burn any oil.