"Shortstar" oil consumption

[buck91]

Does anybody have insight into the shortstar V6 oil consumption issues? Have a '01 Aurora 3.5L that eats oil like crazy. No leaks and pcv valve is new. Ive read that they tend to develop sticky rings and consume oil that way. Have tried multiple fills with maxlife to try to loosen them up without improvement.

Right now I am thinking about topping up with MMO for a couple hundred miles before the next OCI. Any bettrr options? Would seafoam in the crankcase help?

 

[Hokiefyd]

The best way to loosen the rings on a Northstar or a Shortstar is to drive it like you stole it and, probably more importantly, put a "deceleration load" on the rings in addition to standard acceleration loads. This means sliding the transmission selector back into 2 and running it up to 60 or 70 and let it coast back down to 30 mph in 2nd gear. Make the engine brake the car back down. Do that 5 or 10 times in a row.

The Northstar (and probably Shortstar as well) were tragic lessons. You could abuse those things all day along, and they ran better the harder you pushed them. Truly world-class engineering from that time. But they were so severely under-utilized in the blue-haired vehicles in which they were installed. Owners idled them around all day and coked the rings up. Great engineering...but I think also mis-applied engineering.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

GHT would approve

Beating an engine hard to fix it sounds fun to me!

 

[92saturnsl2]

To combat sticking rings, you can pull the plugs and pour a couple ounces of MMO or ATF into the cylinders. Two ounces sounds like a lot, but any excess tends to find its way into the ring lands and seep into the crankcase. Still, you want to be careful not to use too much as liquid does not compress and bad things happen when you try to force it to, like bent rods.

Let it set overnight and it should soak any carbon and help it burn off when you run it the next day. Get it warmed up then drive it like you're 16 for a good few runs around the block.

This helped noticeably reduce oil consumption on vehicles I've had the sticking ring problem with.

 

[Eddie]

For a gumbed up ring pack, I would use Auto-RX. Worked for me when I followed the instructions. Ed