Dear Readers, I have a confession to make. I have been losing some sleep here and there. The reason is silly: I cannot stop thinking about a couple of cars that burn oil. Both of these cars could have easy fixes, or fixes so expensive that my wife and I would be better off just selling the cars and moving on. Somehow, both my wife’s BMW 525iT and my newly-acquired Volkswagen Phaeton smoke, and I’m not talking about little puffs, either. I’m going to see if I can get these rides to stop billowing like steam locomotives. How about you? Are there any car repairs keeping you up at night?
Let’s start with what my wife is dealing with. Toward the end of last year, her 2001 BMW 525iT started exhibiting some alarming behavior. If you haven’t been following the story of this car, it’s the one I bought from The Bishop in 2022, and then gave to Sheryl. At first, our only concern with the vehicle was the fact that its rockers and jack pads were rotting away. Now, we have a whole different problem.
The car always consumed about a quart of oil every thousand miles or so, but suddenly, the consumption ramped up, and quickly. Now, the car burns a quart every 50 miles and it has both myself and a local BMW expert flummoxed.
I’ve been able to confirm that the quart loss of every 50 miles is accurate. The 2.5-liter straight-six under the hood takes about 7 quarts of oil. Sheryl used to get about 30 mpg with the car. Do the math and the engine will burn itself dry of oil before my wife could even drive a full tank of fuel.
We’ve done some diagnosis under the wing of a BMW mechanic. Upon acceleration, a thick cloud of dark grey smoke comes out of the tailpipe. The smoke is thick with oil and will leave droplets on the windshield of a following vehicle. No oil has gotten into the coolant and no coolant has gotten into the oil. Somehow, this car is just burning tons of oil. The mechanic believes it could be an issue with the vehicle’s crankcase ventilation system, but we need to do a leakdown test first. The mechanic is not ruling out the possibility that the engine is in the middle of crapping itself out.
What I can say is that the oil burn has gotten so bad that the vehicle’s spark plugs are oil-fouling. The car now runs with a constant misfire and it’ll even puff out oily smoke at idle.
The other oil disaster I’m dealing with is my newly acquired Volkswagen Phaeton V8. Thankfully, the oil burn is much less than the BMW, but the car still puffs smoke with the pungent odor of oil. The smoke here is interesting because it isn’t dark smoke like the BMW, but a blueish-gray color. The lighter smoke color suggests possible head gasket issues, but the vehicle’s coolant remains clean, pink, and exactly on the reservoir mark it should be on. On the other hand, the oil level does go down.
I will perform a leakdown test to be sure. However, I bought the car with a known bad valve cover leak and I’ve been told that the PCV valve hasn’t been touched in years. Even better, the PCV valve is surprisingly easy to get to on the VAG 4.2-liter timing belt engine.
I feel more confident in vanquishing the smoke issues in the more complicated Phaeton than I do the BMW, and that’s saying something. Really, I’m ok with some oil burn in my cheap Phaeton, but Sheryl is devastated by the state of her BMW. She, like our very own Thomas Hundal, may find herself at a crossroads of dumping way too much money into a car that may not be worth keeping around.
The problem is just finding the time to do all of this. I’ve spent much of this year thus far doing road trips, which hasn’t left me with a ton of time to do the wrenching I’m still allowed to do at home. So, these oil issues will have me up for a little longer until I figure this stuff out.
How about you? Tell us about the car issues you’re perhaps losing some sleep over.
Trying to decide which car to work on. original stock spitfire that needs excessive amounts of body work – or modified spitfire on s10 frame that needs to be back halved and body mounts redone.
The repairs that need doing aren’t why I lie awake staring at the ceiling.
It’s the sound of rain on my roof.
Night after night,
day after day,
month after month that keeps me awake this time of year.
I know what must be done.
I’m wrenching in my mind while I wait for the sun.
-PNW resident without a garage-
https://rislone.com/products/rislone-high-mileage-ring-seal-smoke-repair/
I would give this a shot because why not?
And various other ring unsticking methods. Seafoam, berrymans, a lot of old heads recommend just water for cleaning out combustion chambers.
There is a MKIV GTI VR6 at my friend’s shop that has served me defeat after defeat. He offered it to me a few years back as he could not accept any more cars into his stable without facing the wrath of his partner. Came with blown head gasket but otherwise a strong runner. Head off, cleaned up, back together, multiple attempts at timing (motor in and out) but it still ain’t running right. One day… maybe.
All that great steering and suspension feedback I got a few WW ago? I have done fuck-all with a single sentence of that information. I’m afraid of what I’m gonna find, or doing a too-bad-to-get-to-the-shop shadetree alignment. It’s excuses, it’s all excuses. I can have the car up and wheels off in 10 minutes. But I do literally lie awake at night thinking about it.
In my experience, it’s extremely easy to do an alignment more than good enough to get you to the shop. Last time I needed an alignment, I just used a tape measure and measured from the center lug of the tread on one side to the center lug on the other side. Make both numbers the same and you have zero toe, make the fronts of the wheels 1/16″-1/8″ closer than the backs and you have a good toe adjustment.
It drove perfectly on the way to the alignment shop…… where they told me my alignment was perfect.
I got a set used and rusted steps for my Wrangler and am in the process of teaching myself how to strip and repaint them… after an easy 10hrs I still haven’t found the right equipment combo to make it work.
(1) Wire drill attachment was useless
(2) Wire heads for the angle grinder were a slight improvement but still required a lot of pressure to get rid of the old paint and rust
(3) Wet sandblasting is next… but I got the sand and the necessary attachment only to witness how my pressure washer lacks enough power and I’ll have to either upgrade or rent
This thing is feels like a slow, painful lesson of what is a DIY job vs something you’d better farm out if you lack the necessary equipment!
Paint: stripper, like Kleen Strip. It’s gonna be cheaper than wire brushes you’re gonna use. Edit: and less rework from the gouging and marring they’re gonna do.
Rust: Evaporust, if it’s not too late. I’ve wasted so much time and so much material arguing with mechanical removal.
Rinse with cold water, dry, and if you intend to paint, use a metal etching primer to give yourself a good coatable surface.
Steel brushes will eat aluminum and damage brass (I’m guessing the steps aren’t brass :)). You can use brass brushes on harder metals (steel/iron), but they can impart a rosy, brassy color in the workpiece.
Thank you so much! Will get some of this Kleen Strip tomorrow and start with your process then. The idea is to apply bedliner paint (tested out a spray can of it and it’s not good enough or I’m too dumb to use it well) or sth with more texture if I can find it.
It’s not critical to get all old paint off, it’s just important to get all rust off and to scuff any old paint. If an angle grinder wire wheel doesn’t take the paint off, I would count on it staying. I have never encountered paint(or anything else) that durable.
I just picked up a project car, a late-90s Explorer. The thing has a myriad of issues that I’ve slowly been working through. I fixed the parasitic power draw and charging symptom (sadly, unassociated with one another), but now I’m on to the significant oil leak from the SOHC 4.0L V6 and then I’ll be on to the suspension and drivetrain issues. I’m not trying to make it perfect, but I would like to figure out some way for it to keep its lifeblood inside the crankcase instead of all over my driveway.
Literally every potential job more than an oil change or brake pads & rotors. Endless questions – do I do the job myself, farm it out, do I need special tools, how much will those tools cost, is there anyone I know who can help out, is it time to upgrade to something more high-performance?? The questions go on and on…
My Chinese Grom Clone is keeping me up at night, I feel like im putting too much time and money into it. Its all amazon and thai made Honda parts but still. If I get some good adventures out of it it might be worth it.
A Chinese scooter is one of the few things I’ve ever seen mustie1 fail to get running smoothly that didn’t have some sort of catastrophic mechanical issue. You may be trying to do the impossible. 🙂
Ugh. My 2007 Honda Odyssey has a nasty draw that is draining the battery overnight. Found a loose ground on the negative terminal tightened and still no Mas. Anyone have thoughts?
This is just me googling a nearby year, but maybe it’ll be some help?
https://www.odyclub.com/threads/battery-keeps-dying-please-help.362602/
Those electrical gremlins terrify me, so I’m trying to bank good karma for when it’s my turn.
My Fiat 500 rally car’s suspension. I’m so done with it I haven’t touched that part of the project since the holidays. I had custom rally suspension made, but it makes horrible bangs and clanks and clunks. Everything happens so fast it’s been very difficult to figure out if it’s on compression or rebound, if it’s the strut or the spring, if it’s impacting something, etc. My local auto shop took a shot at it and couldn’t figure anything out. I emailed the manufacturer but they stopped responding to me (though I haven’t tried contacting them again in months).
Fiat 500 rally car?! I feel you’re definitely a Readers Rides candidate, as I can’t be the only one here interested in hearing/seeing more about this.
Thanks! The “Angry Egg” is still a work-in-progress but getting closer. If you look up my username on YouTube, I’ve got sort of a time lapse style build series going on for a few years. Bought it on stock from Cars&Bids in 2021 and used my extra evening time from pandemic-era work-from-home to get a lot of progress early on, though slowing down now that I have a commute again. Figuring out my suspension problems, making a custom skid plate, and putting a race livery on it are the 3 major outstanding things left.
Wow. Not even addressing the car/build’s coolness and your attention to detail, those are some amazingly well-done videos. They remind me of a professional-produced one by Ford in the late ’90s to showcase the then-new Focus and how it was simultaneously being developed as Ford’s WRC entry.
I really enjoyed the “get rid of these annoying dash lights” one. I bet a lot of people don’t bother on builds like these, but for me, it’s the little things that matter.
Thanks for sharing, and Stef absolutely needs to profile you so we can get the big picture!
Much appreciated! I do certainly take pride in my work. No just putting electrical tape over the airbag light, actually do a multiple month deep-dive to fix it on the electronics side. My original thought was to rush through it and just get to racing, but I really did learn to love the craft of just building the car. This is really the first car I’ve “worked on”, too. Prior to the start of this project, my wrenching had pretty much not gone far beyond changing tires.
changing the spark plugs and doing a compression/Leak down test on my Subaru. Just removing the stupid airbox and moving the ECU out of the way for the passenger side are a real PITA
I just got a high-mileage 2006 Volvo V50 whose engine may have grenaded itself before I drove 300km with the title under my name. The call from my mechanic is what’s keeping me up at night (the car should’ve gotten there by now but I haven’t mustered up the courage to call him myself).
I was so ready to love my first “modern” car. Now I feel like I would have been better off buying the 1983 Saab 900 in my saved ads instead.
Hahaha! I’ve been dealing with a 2007 V50 with 197,000 miles on it. Spent the past summer tracing electrical gremlins to a broken wire under the driver carpet, now I’m going to spend this coming summer tracing the broken wire that’s causing the driver power seat to not work. AAAARGH!
My odometer reads about 225k miles (in km), but the car isn’t so bad in terms of annoying electronic gremlins; I did have to replace a failing gas pedal and fuel pressure sensors before actually bringing it home. Power everything isn’t really my thing but it was nice to see all that stuff (seats, windows, locks, mirrors, climate controls, etc) fully functional… for the whole week I actually had it before the engine apparently died (with a weird snap and some dreaded metal on metal sounds as the engine died – I’m am so fucked).
How about one that did, but that I finally recently put to sleep – replacing the bad gears in my 911’s speedometer/odometer gauge.
Every time I drove her I knew I needed to do it and it’s not even a particularly hard job, but the prospect of screwing something up and breaking the gauge beyond repair kept me from it. But I finally summoned the courage, proceeded extremely carefully and slowly, and she’s now done.
But…I haven’t reinstalled the gauge yet, so perhaps part of me is dreading what happens if it doesn’t work then?
I did the same thing in my 944 turbo cluster, along with new lights and I feel your anxiety. The thin film of circuits and old plastic feels like one small mistake from a very bad time.
Now I have to pull it again to calibrate the fuel gauge and clean up some grounds.
Thank you – I feel better now, knowing it’s not just me. I was paranoid about even touching the gauge face once I’d removed it from the housing.
My ’76 BMW 2002 popped it’s head gasket. I’ve removed and stripped the head but it needs welding and skimming so I have to take it to a machine shop and then cross my fingers.
The rust on the rocker panels and rear quarters on my 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer Sportback Ralliart. It’s had it ever since I saved the car from Copart, however I have no idea how to weld, and delving into rust repair is terrifying given the amount of parts I’ve already had to replace on the car due to rust.
One half of me just wants to patch up the rust, the other half of me wants to buy Evo rear doors and quarters and start the process of an Evo Wagon body conversion. It’s just such a large undertaking that I can’t decide which route to take and how much money I really want to sink into this project.
My ’89 F150 has been sitting for the better part of a year with a 75% reinstalled new engine and transmission. I’m kinda dreading the last 1/4 of the install and finding out that something went wrong while it sat.
All of them. I’m having serious decision paralysis as to where to even start. Every car I own needs work. The Lancer’s getting really clunky over bumps. It’s all…a mess.
I tried rating issues by severity in a spreadsheet a while ago, so I think I just need to go back to that spreadsheet.
You have a Dodge Lancer?! Badass!
Nah, it’s a ’10 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS. I can’t kill it, but it’s starting to clunk and moan in pain a bit. I think the suspension’s finally due for a larger refresh after 200,000 miles.
ETA: I need to update it with my latest woes/priorities (“register unregistered turds, then Lancer” is basically it), but this is the turd tracker in question: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U9fSjynladhS5ObfMbeUO0401iwKazqwydv_yoeB5Mw/edit?usp=sharing
Excellent prioritization and organization skills!
I may need to tweak the scoring some. “I’d prefer it if this wasn’t an immovable/dangerous/illegal-for-road-use lump in my friend’s driveway” is priority number one right now.
Not a repair I dread but your BMW has bad oil control rings.
Every symptom you have says so.
I’m thinking either one of them could have bad valve stem seals or guides as well.
Possible but less likely.
Valve stem seals usually smoke when you lift and rings under power.
But that is also a good spot to look.
Regardless that much oil on an old engine it’s time to look inside it
Very few repairs worry me unless I am low in driving cars…
I kinda dread transmission internals but they’re still just nuts and bolts.
Everything works the same and everything follows the same rules.
I missed your acquisition of the second Phaeton. Gurl, what’s wrong with you?! You didn’t have enough pain with the previous one? You needed a second go-round? That’s okay, I get it. I’m totally not looking at Phaetons on FB Marketplace and elsewhere. Nope. Not at all. I definitely need another needy European sedan to go with the V12 Jaguar.
My LeBaron. The rear window motors stopped working, again. Chrysler put the electrical motors right next to the rear convertible top drains in the quarter panels; it’s a widely known defect that is also the reason you never see LeBarons with their rear windows down.
This will be my second time doing this repair: backseat out, trim panels out, regulators out, motors off…
So THAT’S why! I always thought it was just Costanza-esq Le Baron drivers thinking it looked cool. Back in the day/first owner I mean. And to be fair, they would eventually seem cool in comparison to the Sebring crowd…
Second time around things are always easier—but also more aggravating. Like, you’ve already been there, so you don’t have to figure it out. And, since you did it yourself, you know there won’t be any half-assed surprises.
But, also, you’re like, what the hell: I shouldn’t have to be doing this again already!
I bought a 2001 Jaguar XJR with 81K on it about a month ago. Immediately ordered a set of valve cover gaskets, promised myself that I would take off the driver’s side valve cover, and examine those timing chain tensioners. I’m hoping against hope that somewhere in the previous 3 owners, someone upgraded the plastic tensioners with the metal ones. If not, that will be a big $$ expenditure soon.
Haven’t done it yet for two reasons: One, it’s so damn fun to drive, and of course, two, I’m scared to find out.
I did this job on the 4.0 in my ’02 XK8 about 4 years ago and have been trying to get DT to give me the green light to write about it ever since.
A repair that’s certainly not for the faint of heart!
Valve covers. That’s how I spent my damn weekend, and I can recite the tightening pattern of a 2009 Sonata by heart at this point.
What really really pissed me off was that, trying to be a good mechanic and follow torque spec, I had a torque wrench that never locked out and I snapped a bolt in the head, incredulous that I had not passed 50in-lbs. Thankfully I was equipped to fix it, and an extractor and tap made quick work, but I was still furious.
Lesson learned, if a tool seems like it’s giving you bad information, second guess it and trust your elbowmometer.
Timely advice. I did not have a torque wrench that would work on the inch/pounds spec I need for this job, so I bought a mid/low price one, thinking this isn’t something I’ll need that often. I usually do not cheap out on tools, and this wasn’t the cheapest one I could find, but it wasn’t the best either. I’ll be super careful. I think the spec is 97 in/lbs, but I’ll confirm before tackling this. Will replace the spark plugs while I’m in there, since I do not know how old they are.
Last week I did the valve (cam) cover seals on a Lexus (Toyota) 3.3 V6. One of the most challenging jobs I’ve done as access to the rear bank is very tough. Right up against the firewall. New to Toyota stuff and while their metal parts are beautifully made, their seals and gaskets are low grade and get hard and brittle with age and heat.
Finally got the motor out of the Roadster last night. About to head up the hill to pull the oil pan. What’s been keeping me up at night is, what if I was wrong? What if I didn’t actually spin the oil pump nut off? I’ve spent what is a pile of money for me buying another motor & parts for it.
Well, guess I better go find out
I was right: the nut fell out when I removed the pan.
People, if you have an S52, wire that damn nut! You don’t have to pull the motor: you can drop the subframe to clear the pan (using threaded rod to support the subframe). The motor support bar is like $90 from HF. All in—even using good oil—it’ll cost you less than $300. I’ve spent more than 20 times that on a good used motor and all the crap you do while you’re there.
I’m looking forward to wiring the new motor’s nut 🙂