BUSTER,
Two things come to mind when I read your first post..
In my experience over the years I have noticed that when running an engine faster then normal you tend to created higher oil pressures than normally designed for average use. Where you stated you're driving faster than normally use to, the consumption has gone up. First, try this,
See if you can keep your foot out of it for a trail period of the same mileage and check your level. If the level is good, you now have your answer as to why it is using more now. Another way to establish this is to let it go to one qt low, and run it at that level and see if it continues to drop. I suspect it will stable out at one qt low for the rest of the drain. Let me explain why I think this may be ...
In my 10k drain I ran to texas and back like I stole the car. Once back, I noticed that I was a qt low. This is unusual as this car uses none period. So, what happened is that when driving at those higher speeds, my oil pump was creating higher flow rates through my filter and higher pressures. This would also increase the pressure around the rings, so it could and would push oil past the rings. Now what happened was it pushed just enough oil out(in this case 1qt) and leveled off at the one low qt mark. It never dropped any lower than that. So this leads me to believe that the pressure issue is valid because one qt low lowered my pressure enough that was no longer was excessive pressure for that speed. Once back, I went to driving it normal again, with almost 8k on my oil now, it has not used one ounce of oil like on my previous trip. everything is normal.
The design of engines oil system is different from one car to the next as the overflow spring in an oil pump may vary from one to the next. Given that this is the case, one engine may use a qt every 3k of driving where another uses none. If an oil pump doesn't release the pressure and creates higher pressure than the rings are designed for, it could be pushing out oil around the rings, but may level off at one qt low. Many people have found that their cars will burn off one qt and run like that from there on. This would stand to reason if the oil pump is creating excessive pressure. Anyway, I know the gearheads are gonna chew me up and spit me out for this insane idea but I can't argue with my experience in this case and thought sharing this may just open up some eyes on this problem than many seem to have.
[ January 24, 2003, 05:33 AM: Message edited by: BOBISTHEOILGUY ]