Originally Posted By: crainholio
My '09 Forester EJ25 has a predictable oil consumption pattern...near zero for the first ~3K miles each OCI, then it starts burning oil at a rate of 1/2 quart per 1,000 miles thereafter. Manual says 7,500mi OCI, I do around 6K miles.
However, this only seems to happen on prolonged highway cruising at 2800-3000RPM. When I flip work contracts and I'm not running a weekly 480 mile commute (230 on Monday, 230 back home on Friday, misc local mileage), it's all short trip mileage and holds the level all the way to ~6K mile oil change. Prolonged high-rev operation seems to drive oil consumption.
I've replaced the PCV valve with a Subaru part, no effect. It seems to burn the least when running Valvoline synthetic high mileage 5w30 in Winter, and same flavor in 10w30 in Summer. The worst consumption was with Mobil 1 High Mileage 5w30, and the valvetrain was noisy at hot idle. I tried 3 OCIs with this M1 and it chewed up oil at nearly 1 quart per 1K miles after it got past 2K miles each OCI. The engine has 109K miles on it and runs well, 24-26MPG if I keep the tach around 2500 RPM on the highway.
I also found oil consumption to only really show itself with prolonged high speed usage aswell.
This was with a 2004 Legacy 2.0 Auto, the economy single cam engine with 137bhp that was fitted for the first couple of years of production.