Someday soon I will have a 5.5 gen and I was just wondering after seeing a monster thread about 3.5 oil burners. The only thing I can think of to find out is to drive it for about 1 or 2K miles on a test drive.

No you cant. But, its a some what small amount that do burn oil. Id say just go for it. Mine does burn oil, but not excess amounts, very little. I still love the car though!

Does your state still do emission testing? I would think an oil burning
problem would show up in the test results.
Also check the oil level, if the car does have a problem, and the owner
is too lazy to top it up, you will see it down a bit.
I don't think the "oil burning problem" is as common as we make it out to
be. I bought my 2k2 two months ago, hasn't burned a drop.

Not really true. Most states do OBD-II testing these days, so they only check for DTCs with a scanner and no tail pipe sniffers are used.

At full throttle is when it burns the most you might be able to tell if there is any grey smoke coming out of the exhaust at full throttle that is if u get a chance to floor it durning a test drive.

I'm going to have to call BS on that. My new engine is puffing a little. Nissan rings are complete crap.

The best way to tell is run it up to redline at WOT while under load at night with a car behind you. You'll see a puff of smoke at higher RPM's if there's a problem.

*snickers*


But on the reals I never heard of someone doing that to check for burning, just to check to see if someone was running rich during FI

Can't Blackstone supposedly determine wear?

Now, ive been paying somewhat attention to these threads, how come the 3.5 has oil problems that no one can really figure out, and these are relatively new engines with low miles? and my buddys 97 vq30 with 158,000 doesnt burn a drop? neither does my 92,000 mile 2k1?

Thanks for all the feedback, I guess it will be the chance I take when getting one of these. But I'm sure someone on this forum will eventually tear an engine down and figure out what is wrong with these.

Nissan used bad rings.........step your post/search game up

That's what everyone thinks, but noone has definitivly determined it. I'll be the first to do a tear-down. Things are a little crazy right now, so bear with me for three or four weeks!

Tilley did in December, but you refuse to listen.

http://forums.maxima.org/showpost.ph...2&postcount=69

Sure its just one person, but he's the only one who has really checked it to date.


We've been bearing with you for about over a year now....

the reason I "refuse to listen" is because if that were the case on every maxima, they'd all burn oil from 1,000 miles on! Not only that, but they'd burn even more oil than mine ever did! Oh, and the NTSA would have forced a recall because with a problem like that, there'd be combustion in the oil pan causing fires.

Thinking > you.

No you haven't. i've only had the new engine in for six weeks and you know where it's at right now and if you think about it really hard, you also know why it hasn't been done....

And all this time I was thinking it was from a bad knock sensor and carbon fiber hood installation

It's all because of Seafoam....

Which is why I said in the other thread its probably not as prevalent as we're making it out to be. As for whether what Tilley found is the same for all VQ35s burning oil, we won't know until someone else can find a different cause for oil loss. He's still the only one to date who has actually done anything to help this cause.

Then maybe next time you should wait till you've actually done it before constantly posting how you're going to do it.

http://forums.maxima.org/showpost.ph...2&postcount=69

So Nissan designed it wrong? Well, if thats where the oil is getting through, it's not really that the rings are bad but they are just not set up to keep the oil from escaping into the exhaust. As long as it doesn't screw up cats, I think I could live with a little oil disappearing.

It'll definitly screw up the cats. That's what stopped my car when I replaced the engine. The pre-cats disintegrated and blew into the main cat clogging it up.

The old fashion way to check to see if a car burns oil is to shove your finger as far as you can inside the tail pipe and rub it around the inside of the pipe (make sure the tailpipe is cold so you don't burn yourself!). If it burns oil, the inside of the tailpipe will feel slippery and your finger will come out with a coating of brownish/black oil on it. If not, it will feel a little rough and your finger will come out with a light brown coating, which is likely small amounts of rust from inside the tailpipe, which is normal.

While this is not a fail-proof check (the owner could know this trick and clean the tailpipe before you arrive), it is an easy "10 second, no tools or mechanical expertise required" check.

Good luck!
Pete

Good recall. I've been screwing around with mine for so long that I've forgotten all the old-school tricks!

I'm not sure if it is the best, but it sure does let you know. In my case when I owned an 89 Ford Probe which was given(yes, given)to me, that car burned a quart every two weeks.Didn't leak at all. Puffs of smoke...****, clouds of smoke would come out at WOT. It had 260xxx miles on it.

Man that is a lot of miles on a Probe...

Yes there is...test drive it for 1000 miles and you will see.....

Yeah, I drove it for 8 months til this lady failed to yield and I T-boned her. I really enjoyed collecting on the insurance which is when I bought my 2nd gen.