a 96 was not in that generation of oil consumption issues. 98-2002, I believe. I have owned both a 95 and 96 Prizm, great cars.
Last edited:
I'm burning 1Q of oil every 200 miles!
- Thread starter bennybigb
- Start date
- Status
no problem trying seafoam, MMO, Kreen. What is there to lose?
I bought a volvo s60 a while back to clean up, fix and eventually give to my daughter. (She gets it in a few months). It needed 1 qt/10days when I brought it home. This didn't bother me too much. On a whim a poured half of a can of seafoam in the sump about 1000 miles out from needing it's next oil change. By the time that OC came around, consumption was cut in half. Having kept it up, it hardly consumes any oil now. I got lucky, yes. Maybe you might....
-m
Originally Posted By: bigt61
I'd try 10W-40 MaxLife Blend - if it burns that, you have a problem. Next stop, SuperTech 20W-50 in the Spring.
I have a '97 Corolla with the same engine and they are well known oil burners. Its the well talked about piston oil return holes. This problem is well documented and is a frequent topic on any Toyota forum you can find. If you've ever opened up one of these engines its very easy to see the problem once you hold one of the pistons in your hand. The rings will be completely locked in place with hard carbon deposits. I've been inside a few of them and worked on one that even after 20 minutes of chiseling, scraped, cussing and gnashing of teeth never got even one ring off.
Mine burns Mobil 2 at a rate of 1 qt every 200-300 miles. Highway driving increases the burn rate significantly. No piston soaks, MMO, high mileage oils, Italian tune ups, or anything short of a teardown and cleaning/replacing pistons is going to work. Thicker oils did nothing. I ran 0W-20 for a while it actually seemed to disappear slower but it did increase the drip rate from the well worn front and rear main seals. The current Mobil 2 0W-30 and 5W-30 its gets now drips about a dime sized stain maybe a couple times a week. The 0W-20 was doing that pretty much every day.
These cars will runs many hundreds of thousands of miles even as horrible oil burners. We are just about to tick over 360,000 on ours and it runs so smooth its mind boggling. Not a puff of smoke ever. The exhaust doesnt even have that burnt-oil smell. I'm assuming the cat is still doing its job, there is no check engine light (yes it works, EGR has tripped a few times in recent years) and its had one heck of a lot of oil gone through its gut over the years.
As long as the underside is in ok shape, no rust in important areas and the brake lines are good, drive it until it drops. Whatever money you could spend on a new car will buy a LOT of oil.
Originally Posted By: quint
I have a '97 Corolla with the same engine and they are well known oil burners. Its the well talked about piston oil return holes. This problem is well documented and is a frequent topic on any Toyota forum you can find.
Originally Posted By: Ramblejam
Nick,
Are you aware that his Prizm has the Toyota A engine, and not the later ZZ engine? What you quoted above is discussing the ZZ.
I don't know how it took me so long to find the 60 page Kreen Thread from 2010 bit I did.
And I'm thinking that I might want to try Kreen for my oil burner 2008 Scion xB 2AZ-FE which doesn't qualify for the "free pistons with improved oil drain holes" service bulletin. She burns a slightly varying amount of about a quart every 1,000-1,200 miles. Anecdotally, it eats slightly more rapidly later in an OCI it "seems". I've never dared to go a whole OCI just letting it "eat and eat" for the whole 3k.
At this point I don't feel like any piston soaks which may dislodge the likely fairly good cake of piston top carbon (which on summer days is giving me some acceleration pinging on 87 octane)
So anyone think that doing the good old 3oz Kreen per quart of sump capacity is a good idea even if it is burning the Kreen with the oil as it digests it?
I would think the Kreen would have a better shot at helping your engine so give it a shot but a qt every 200 mi is out of this world. Whizbang in a can isn't helping that.
Originally Posted By: quint
As long as the underside is in ok shape, no rust in important areas and the brake lines are good, drive it until it drops. Whatever money you could spend on a new car will buy a LOT of oil.
Whatever you do, keep it going. There are way too many new cars on the road.
I'm serious.
The PCV Valve seems fine, it has good suction and still rattles. I've put in 20% MMO and I'll run the last 250 miles or so out of my typical 4k OCI. Then I'll try more MMO and cleaning Pennzoil HM Oil.
She's probably toast, but I'll keep dumping oil in it. I figure I get about 800 miles per gallon (of oil), so if you look at it that way it sounds pretty good I guess...
Also, I will try to keep if off the freeway, if I take the backroads to work I might use less oil, it's more stop and go and 40mph stuff rather than 70mph.
Uhhmn, Thick stuff is used for excess clearances. Stuck rings respond to solvents, some times.
I married into a Saturn that progressed from a quart every 500 to one every 200 miles. Restore, Auto-Rx, MMO, 10-30, 10-40, 15-40, high mileage oil and consumption kept increasing--it would eat whatever I fed it. I didn't know about Kreen then, but it sounds like something I might have tried.
Even with that consumption, it ran fine and got 36 mpg on the highway, sometimes more. Of course, that meant the oil would be a quart low before it needed gas.
Bottom line: check the oil and shop the sales and clearance tables.
I drove an old beater once with very worn piston rings, went through a quart in less than 100 miles. I didn't put a ton of miles on it as it was a weekend warrior to get out of the city. Went for a long time with me adding oil every 100 miles out of a gallon container I kept in the trunk.
I eventually got rid of the car, but it was other expensive repairs needed to keep it going, had nothing to do with the motor that was still kicking along and going through oil at an astounding rate.
You probably aren't going to solve this problem. Throwing money at it is interesting, but a waste. You probably have cracked or ruined oil control rings. Though it is interesting you get no smoke. I would pull the plugs and try to figure out which cylinder is burning the most.
Not that era.
The '96 had either the 4A-FE or the 7A-FE engine. You are thinking of the 1ZZ-FE, IIRC. I think it came out in the Corolla in 1998, again IIRC.
It's a known issue on the Toyota 4-cyl. of that era. The motor needs to be opened up and cleaned with additional drain ports drilled into it. Thicker oil only makes the problem worse...
Originally Posted By: Nickdfresh
Originally Posted By: bennybigb
Hey Guys,
My 1996 Geo Prizm is now burning 1 Quart of oil every 200 miles. It doesn't seem to smoke too bad, or drip too much, I don't know where the oil is going, but I drive 400 miles a week, so I use 2 quarts of oil per week just keeping that thing on the road.
The car has always used some oil, but when I finally started using my G-Oil stash, the usage picked up a lot. I now ran out of G-Oil, so I am putting 10-30 Peak oil in it for Top-Off. I think I may try a high mileage oil in a thicker grade and possibly some stop leak.
What do you guys think? Is there any quick additive that might work for my Oil Guzzler?
Thanks!
Ben
I would try the oil additives several times. My car went through a
series of gas and oil additives to lower the HCs that were rising
each year and threatened to fail CA smog.
I think there's a lot of build-up in the engine that causes oil
consumption.
If you've given up on this car, maybe you can find some people (neighbors, friends, people on here who live close) who are willing to give you used oil and you can burn through that instead of burning through fresh oil. I got the idea from a thread I read on here. The guy was picking up oil from random places and he didn't know if there were any other contaminants in it to put in his Saturn that was burning 1 qt/500 miles. Of course he didn't even bother putting it through a strainer. The oil filter he cut open didn't look pretty, but I think he was using it for 15k miles or something.
I think it would be an interesting experiment to see how long the car lasts. It's a Corolla afterall 
Originally Posted By: asiancivicmaniac
If you've given up on this car, maybe you can find some people (neighbors, friends, people on here who live close) who are willing to give you used oil and you can burn through that instead of burning through fresh oil. I got the idea from a thread I read on here. The guy was picking up oil from random places and he didn't know if there were any other contaminants in it to put in his Saturn that was burning 1 qt/500 miles. Of course he didn't even bother putting it through a strainer. The oil filter he cut open didn't look pretty, but I think he was using it for 15k miles or something.
I think it would be an interesting experiment to see how long the car lasts. It's a Corolla afterall
- Status
