Burning oil (2017 manual)

[dostoyevsky]

Hey guys, I have a 2017 brz with 4600km on it and I changed my oil to 5w-30 at 2360km. I've burned around 0.3-0.4L during a 2300km period. Is this normal?

I drive the car pretty hard.

[Icecreamtruk]

That is around what I use on similar amount of Kms. I do a fair amount of track days too, so it depends on how hard you run it I guess.

[cjd]

I have a sizable amount of oil in my catch can, though more like a few tablespoons. Lots of little opportunities. Also a chance that temp and time vary just how much has drained back when you check.

[wolffbite]

Changed mine at 1600 (after breakin) and currently at ~7500. Had to top up around the 5000 mark less than half a liter. If you drive hard and downshift a lot I think it's expected to burn some oil, especially in the first several thousand kms of the car. I stuck with 0w/20.

Any reason you switched to 5w/30?

[humfrz]

I wouldn't worry about it.

Besides, if you don't stop worrying about it ...... what would you do about it ??.....


humfrz

[dostoyevsky]

Originally Posted by wolffbite

Changed mine at 1600 (after breakin) and currently at ~7500. Had to top up around the 5000 mark less than half a liter. If you drive hard and downshift a lot I think it's expected to burn some oil, especially in the first several thousand kms of the car. I stuck with 0w/20.

Any reason you switched to 5w/30?

0w20 is too thin for my tastes. My oil temperatures get pretty high when I daily the car.

[8RZ]

Even though the manufacturer recommends 0w20?

[chaoskaze]

Normal, in japanese manual it states that you can lost up to 0.5-1.0L of oil max under extreme hard use of the car every 1000 km/621 miles.

Originally Posted by 8RZ

Even though the manufacturer recommends 0w20?

Manufacturer recommends up to 5w-40 for extreme heavy use, don't forget subaru of america don't want you to track/abuse the car so they not gonna be all nice and update this info for you.

Japanese manual stated that they put 0w-20 in new car for fuel economy, ONLY.



PS:stay 0w-20 if you live somewhere cold as f.

[Borchert97]

This is completely normal for a Subaru boxer engine. Just check your oil periodically, fill it as needed or let the dealership handle it when you bring it in for service, I work at a Subaru and it appears that this isn't even harmful as long as you bring your car in as scheduled which is either every 5 or 6k miles, because all those mom's with Outbacks and Foresters aren't going to be checking oil levels, but their cars don't blow up in their faces either.

[dutchman1]

I don't think it's abnormal, mine is doing the same thing.

I'm about about 15000 miles and close to 100 autocross runs on the car.

Added 1 quart of oil at around 5000 miles. Changed the oil at 7500 and was about a half quart low. Added about a quart at 12500 again. Bout to change the oil again this weekend.

I used 0w30 on the oil change instead of 0w20, and it didn't seem to make a difference. I'll probably just go back to 0w20.

As people said, it's a boxer engine so it's gonna burn some oil. All engines do to a degree, especially at high rpms.

[strat61caster]

Also, per the manual and anecdotal evidence, new engine burn a bit of oil while they break in, it'll improve once you get more mileage on the engine.

[Spuds]

In case you needed someone else to say it, I go through about .5 to 1 liter between changes at 7-8k ish. Used to be a bit more as I recall

[ROGER-86]

I have been carefully tracking my oil consumption on my 2017 86 Automatic by observing how many quarts of Mobil-1 I have gone through topping up over the last 2.5 years and 27K mi. My car uses exactly 1 qt every 12,400 miles.

As an aside: coolant consumption is 3.7oz every 7,500mi service interval.

I was super careful during the break-in period to watch RPM's and vary constantly, and a few strong pulls (torque'y, but not high RPM) to "seat the rings" if that really does happen. The car gets serviced per book at the dealer as it's new.

I drive it only for fun on a 90 mile route mostly on hiway-1 (Calif coast) to my fav hill climb from San Gregorio to Woodside CA. I do the 10 miles in the hills at 4,500-7K RPM quite hard, very fun. The oil temp gets to about 234 deg at it's peak when I reach the peak of the mountain. The water hits 212 at most (ambient air temperature of about 85).

Scenic driving flat along the coast the oil is 196 deg and water is 190.

I also blend my stupid 91 Calif gas in Woodside with 100 oct race gas (the 76 sells it there!) to get 93 oct and watch the ignition timing to confirm it advances properly to get the most power. I use BlueDriver to monitor.

Another aside... Starting in 2017 forward, Subaru stupidly programmed the car to let the battery discharge during acceleration and stops, doing most of the charging while decelerating only. I discovered this when I parked to listen to the radio for an hour and the car would barely crank. They said it's for "economy" B.S.! This will ruin batteries faster. You can force the car to "normal charge" at 14.2V by turning on the running lights (I drive with them all the time now). Also, if you turn the fan on it will hold at 13.3V. But drive normally and watch the voltage drop from an initial 14.4 at start to around 12.1 in just a few minutes. More on this later as I'm working up a big expose.

I'm an Engineer, I like to measure things.