A4 guzzling oil but running fine?

[Dieselmad]

Originally Posted by jonahkuzma

I am wondering about your list of maybe's:
2) If bad head gasket...does oil actually leak (like you see it on the garage floor) or just burn?
3) How do you check if rings are bad WITHOUT pulling head?
4) How do you check CCV and where is this on a 2003 Jetta
5) How do you know if your cat is blocked
6) How do you know if valve guides, stems and seals are bad? Again--do you have to pop head?

Thanks much!

2) Head gasket can leak in many ways. Oil can leak out on the floor or it can leak into the water system or it can leak into the cylinder and burn. Same with water.
3) Oil rings can only be checked by taking the piston out. Take out glow plugs and see if there is allot of carbon built up. If it is only one cylinder with a bad oil ring then you should be able to see the carbon difference on the gp.
4) CCV is the breather pipes running from the block to the head. Normally its that one way valve on the top right hand side of the head(round black plastic thingy) that gets chocked up.
5) If the cat block then the turbo spool up is not so responsive as what it was and your car wont pull as good as what it was. Difficult to know if it is definitively blocked or not. Best would be to do a cat removal.

[jonahkuzma]

Thanks for the explanations. My CCV puck unit looks pretty oily and actually, so does the big rubber inlet pipe that runs into the manifold. We cleaned that whole thing out when we put my new turbo in. Could it already be getting caked in there again, restricting air after only 1 year? Especially if I have been burning LOTS of oil for the past year?

[paramedick]

Originally Posted by jonahkuzma

Thanks for the explanations. My CCV puck unit looks pretty oily and actually, so does the big rubber inlet pipe that runs into the manifold. We cleaned that whole thing out when we put my new turbo in. Could it already be getting caked in there again, restricting air after only 1 year? Especially if I have been burning LOTS of oil for the past year?

Read post #3 again.

[StillGed]

Thanks for all the help.... Just for an update, compression on #2 was low, so I wound up getting the piston rings replaced. #2 was actually broken in half! No wonder I was burning so much oil.

New rings, new seals, now the car is running great!

[runonbeer]

Originally Posted by runonbeer

6) worn out valve guides, stems and seals.

This sounds like rings though.

Boom! Wouldn't have expected a fully broken one though.

[turbocharged798]

Been dealing with a oil consumption issue with the 99.5 for years now. It burns through a quart per 3-5K miles which is neither good nor bad. Compression was very high across all four(600psi) so I think the oil rings aren't sealing like they should and is causing higher than normal compression readings.

Been keeping an eye on it and I'll probably pull it apart if it gets more than a quart per 3K miles. Rotella T6 is cheap so it hardly worth the effort right now.