Oil Burn

[highrpm]

I have a 94 Galant GS. I've always loved this car, bought it with about 33,000 miles on it. It's always gone through about a quart of oil between changes but the rate of burn has increased. Now the engine has 95,000 miles on it and I need to add a quart every 700 - 1000 miles. Does anyone else have this problem and know how to diagonose or fix? All I can tell is that it looks like smoke comes out the tail upon hard accelleration, anything over 4k RPM.

Is this a valve or piston ring problem?

Thanks.

[manybrews]

the 94 to early 96 blocks often developed this issue.

its got a pretty good chance of having cylinders that are out-of-round.


provided everything else is in good shape, you would need to have the block bored.


frankly, my recommendation is to leave it. mitsus have ALWAYS used a bit more oil than they should (in my opinion, anyway).

there is no loss of performance or reliability from this problem, provided you dont allow it to run out of oil.

[BEAST]

I have noticed this problem too. I have 165,000 miles on mine. I thought that it was just because I drove it hard. But I guess now I know for sure.

[Kain]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(manybrews)</div><div class='quotemain'>the 94 to early 96 blocks often developed this issue.

its got a pretty good chance of having cylinders that are out-of-round.


provided everything else is in good shape, you would need to have the block bored.


frankly, my recommendation is to leave it. Â* mitsus have ALWAYS used a bit more oil than they should (in my opinion, anyway).

there is no loss of performance or reliability from this problem, provided you dont allow it to run out of oil.</div>

Wow, I feel really lucky than. I have a '94 with 132k and it dosen't burn a drop of oil. And it's never been rebuilt either. But my Galant seems to be unusually good. Maybe it's because it was one of the first 7g's off the assembly line?

[manybrews]

the engineers never told us what was up with the problem.. i probably swapped a couple dozen blocks myself back in 94-95 due to this...

i heard rumors of low nickle content in the blocks, though.

however, its NOT unreliable. they just used some oil.

[bongi]

it is usually the valve stem seals, somehow after awhile like 100,000 miles it hardens and oil leaks past it giving you the blue smoke when accelerating but cruising, there is no smoke. if the dealer tells you it is the valve guides, wrong, the cylinder liners, wrong- it is just the oil seals. do some compression testing, if all cylinders are all 170's psi and up the valves and piston rings are okay. you can change the oil seals without taking the head out and should cost only $150 bucks.

[manybrews]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bongi)</div><div class='quotemain'>it is usually the valve stem seals, somehow after awhile like 100,000 miles it hardens and oil leaks past it giving you the blue smoke when accelerating but cruising, there is no smoke. Â*if the dealer tells you it is the valve guides, wrong, the cylinder liners, wrong- it is just the oil seals. do some compression testing, if all cylinders are all 170's psi and up the valves and piston rings are okay. Â*you can change the oil seals without taking the head out and should cost only $150 bucks.</div>
no, actually, youre incorrect.
as i stated, the problems with the 94s to 96s were out of round cylinders. they happened as low as 10000 miles. Its true that most mitsus develope valve wear before anything else, and it is a source of oil consumption.
however, here are a few things you need to know.
first, it is indeed valve guide wear combined with hardened seals that cause this. just replacing hardened seals is on a bandaid fix, and will probably last a year, at best (if it helps at all). mitsu had a huge problem with valve guides loosening up and falling out of thier bore.
second, compression testing tells you NOTHING about the condition of the oil rings. it only shows you the condition of the compression rings. Ive have 6 cylinder engines with 4 pistons worth of TOTALLY SIEZED oil rings, but compression and performance were fine.
also, the time the oil smoke is present tells you a lot about what is damaged. worn valve guide / valve seals usually puff blue upon the initial startup in the morning, and after extended idling (about 10 minutes). its very noticable.
ring siezure smoke usually occurs under deceleration. and turbo failure usually has it smoking constantly, no matter the conditions.
keep in mind that with these blocks you probably wont see the slightest amount of blue smoke. it was a very prominant issue in the mid-90s, of which we fixed hundreds. Frankly, as the car is no longer under warranty, i would not hesistate to tell the owner to not mess with it.

[highrpm]

I appreciate all the input. So is there any method that I could do to check which is actually causing the problem? I realize the valves are probably the easiest to check but to measure the cylinder bore would require pulling the head off.

Any suggestions on what would be required to fix this problem if it appears to be getting close to fixing the problem? Or is it acceptable to add a quart of oil with every other tank refill?

If I decide to sell the car should I tell the owner of the problem and inform them it's best to just watch the oil level?

Thanks.

Eric

[bongi]

frankly, i agree that the valve guides can be worn out, the cylinder linings out of round but see i had my 1988 mitsu galant with 6G72 V6 and was noticeably smoking during idling and during acceleration, I brought to different shops, the dealer and almost everybody told me that I have to replace the heads, probably a remanufactured one. With the dealer I was looking at $3500 at least for all the repairs and who knows what. But after reading about the potential valve seals problems with mitsubishi engines( I even saw a 5 year old 3000GT smoking like my car) I decided to try replacing the valve seals ONLY. I checked the compression to see if there were leaks in the valve seats to valve, if you have a good compression, you are at least sure that your valves are seating well and the piston rings can still produce the same compression. So, it was reading 175's on all 6 cylinders. I believe that if the compression improves when you add engine oil through the sparkplug hole to fill out the chamber, your problems is in your rings. if it does not improve it is a toss between the rings or the valve seats. Since my compression was 175's that saved me the trouble of buying new heads. Rented an air compressor, bought a valve spring compressor and a sparkplug adaptor. Removed the intake plenum, valve covers and and the rocker arms, leaving the camshaft behind and with the air compressor on, the valves did not fall inside the cylinder and easily replaced the valve seals with new ones, mind you, my car had new part numbers for the valve seals because of the TSB's of the valve being defective. After using 20W/40 and even 20W/50 before the fix, I tried to use 10W/30 like I would a new car. That was at 80,000 miles/5 years ago. Had emission tested and passed both static and dynoed testing twice. Now the car has 190,000 miles and shows no signs of quitting. Yes, there no smoke at all even after >100,000 miles and still uses 10W/30 oil. I think replacing the heads and a full engine tear just because of this belief is overkill. If that is the case, shouldn't there be a recall because of this problem? :wink:

[IllestGalant]

If you see smoke pouring out of the tailpipe on hard accel it is called
blow by caused by pistons, piston rings, or cylinder walls. on the power stroke of the cylinders cylce it is being forced down by combustion and
some oil is going up around the piston into the combustion chamber and being blown out of the exhaust valves on the exhaust stroke. if it was valve stem seals, you would see smoke when revs where dropping from say 6k to 4k.

[bongi]

well that is what they always tell you, but if the seals are really bad, if you accelerate hard, the oil from the intake valves is sucked to the chambers and it will give you the same picture. that is why you have to check the compression of each cylinder. it is rare to have a worn out oil ring without a worn out compression ring unless the engine has been overhauled before and you do not know what the mechanic was thinking.

[bongi]

https://www.thegalantcenter.org/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif and if it is really blowby, you have smoke all the time whether it be in acceleration or deceleration. go figure :roll:

[manybrews]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bongi)</div><div class='quotemain'>https://www.thegalantcenter.org/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif and if it is really blowby, you have smoke all the time whether it be in acceleration or deceleration. go figure :roll:</div>
no, you dont. . you usually ONLY have it on deceleration, as i stated before.

in regards to your 88 galant, well, the valve seals were (and still are) only a bandaid fix, as also stated before. the 3.0 SOHC engines in these had such a problem with the valve guides falling out of the heads that the aftermarket (and then chrysler AND mitsu) developed a 3rd party fix for it, which involves a special tool that pulls the guide back into the head, cuts a groove in it, and adds a "snap ring" to hold it in place.
no shop doing a valve job on one would even contemplate doing a valve job without adding these snap rings.

it sounds to me like you just had shitty service.

[nme7]

Hey highrpm, I had the exact same problem as you. Go figure since I have same model as you too. Anyhow, I was having the same problem as you, namely the burning of oil at a pretty fast rate. What I did do is change the oil to something like Vavoline Max Life. It's a motor oil used for cars that have over 75K miles. Supposedely it reconditions the seals so it won't leak/burn. I've had it in my car for about 3k miles now and my oil levels hold steady. Before, I would have to check my oil once a week and have a few bottles of oil handy just in case. Now, the oil level stays at the same place. This stuff works great but it does cost a bit more than regular motor oil. However it's not as expensive as sythetic oils. Give it a try. At the worst, it will only cost you an oil change.

[bongi]

no, you dont. . you usually ONLY have it on deceleration, as i stated before.

in regards to your 88 galant, well, the valve seals were (and still are) only a bandaid fix, as also stated before. the 3.0 SOHC engines in these had such a problem with the valve guides falling out of the heads that the aftermarket (and then chrysler AND mitsu) developed a 3rd party fix for it, which involves a special tool that pulls the guide back into the head, cuts a groove in it, and adds a "snap ring" to hold it in place.
no shop doing a valve job on one would even contemplate doing a valve job without adding these snap rings.

it sounds to me like you just had shitty service.[/quote]

If that is only a bandaid fix 100,000 miles after that and still going is a very long time to be a bandaid fix. It started to burn at 80,000 and because of the"bandaid fix" I am still using it and right now it has 190,000 miles, no smoke, no joke so if you are saying it was bandaid fix, you got me confused buddy. and have you actually tried doing it fixing it or just from books and magazine? https://www.thegalantcenter.org/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif

[manybrews]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bongi)</div><div class='quotemain'>

If that is only a bandaid fix 100,000 miles after that and still going is a very long time to be a bandaid fix. Â*It started to burn at 80,000 and because of the"bandaid fix" I am still using it and right now it has 190,000 miles, no smoke, no joke so if you are saying it was bandaid fix, you got me confused buddy. Â*and have you actually tried doing it fixing it or just from books and magazine? https://www.thegalantcenter.org/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif</div>
being as ive worked for mitsu for over ten years, id say that ive fixed about 100 of these particular v-6s with oil consumption problems.
if yours is still dry, your lucky. anyone in the industry knows about the massive problems with the SOHC 3.0 liter heads and the valve guides.
im pretty sure if i took yours apart i would find excessive wear, but if your happy, more power to you.

[Kain]

In my experience, there's always going to be an exception to every rule. My Galant is one of those exceptions, considering it's at 134K with a nearly 100% stock engine, and still runs just as good as when it was brand new. The '88 V6 Galants were fairly rare if I remember right, but the engine wasn't. I was all of 5 years old in '88, so I'm not really up on the cars from back than, but I believe that was the same engine that went in the Montaro, and I think some of the Chrysler vans got that engine. And I know for a fact the Montaro smoked BAD! Unless you got the valve seals replaced about every 90k or so. Again, just my $0.02

[manybrews]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Kain)</div><div class='quotemain'>In my experience, there's always going to be an exception to every rule. My Galant is one of those exceptions, considering it's at 134K with a nearly 100% stock engine, and still runs just as good as when it was brand new. The '88 V6 Galants were fairly rare if I remember right, but the engine wasn't. I was all of 5 years old in '88, so I'm not really up on the cars from back than, but I believe that was the same engine that went in the Montaro, and I think some of the Chrysler vans got that engine. And I know for a fact the Montaro smoked BAD! Unless you got the valve seals replaced about every 90k or so. Again, just my $0.02</div>
that engine was put into nearly 1 million chrysler vehicals (vans, cars, blah blah blah), so the problem is pretty well documented.

[bongi]

:roll: i replaced it only once, at 80,000 miles. engine all stock, no work done at all except for the regular timing belt and water pump service every 60,000 miles. still driving it hard but with regular oil changes every 5,000 miles that's all. the electronic suspension is another story. replaced the air compressor once and replaced one of the front struts all the rest have been original. the engine though have been good, thank god! tranny has been the original one, too. the car is durable, that is why if some malfunction happens, usually it is just the minor things like fuse, fusible links. the relay switches have been bullet proof, the ABS is absolute technology during the winter months and the muffler and exhaust system i think is stainless steel since it hasn't break yet.

[95vegasgalant]

:twisted: Tell you this my car does it too I have 145000 miles the only thing I use is a produst called restore its like 5 bucks and you can tel the difference in power and oil consumption :twisted:

[ViciousLord]

ok heres my problem with my 95 S, when i turn it on no smoke at all, after its warmed up and at idle no smoke, crusining around town no smoke, but when i get on the highway and floor it i can see not alot of smoke but i can see it, id say like about little under a medium amount of smoke, whats my problem? if any

P.S. i hate cleaning my bumper all the time cause of this, but at least i dont look like those civics with the exhuast stains all the way up to the truck,lol, my stains reach up half way up my bumper

[TJC]

I had this problem recently with burning oil and smoke. I had a leak on the valve cover gasket so I replaced it and that stopped the leak. The revving the engine really high, also led me to find out that oil was leaking out of the oil cap. Apparently the rubber gaskets don't stay supple and will harden over time and no longer form a good seal. As for the oil cap, well didn't catch that until you rev the engine and splash tons of oil on it to see the leak there. I flipped the seal on the cap as a temporary fix but still need a new one. Also, you want to make sure the bolts are torqued down to the right specs as over torquing them actually will warp the lip of the valve cover and actually give you a poor seal.

These are two places you should definitely investigate before concluding to internal leaks if you don't see smoke out your tailpipe.

[manybrews]

ok heres my problem with my 95 S, when i turn it on no smoke at all, after its warmed up and at idle no smoke, crusining around town no smoke, but when i get on the highway and floor it i can see not alot of smoke but i can see it, id say like about little under a medium amount of smoke, whats my problem? if any


if its only smoking under heavy acceleration, id say its not oil smoke at all, but rather smoke from a rich mixture. rich mixtures produce BLACK smoke, oil burners produce blue smoke, and coolant burning produces white smoke.


its NORMAL to have a small amount of pure black smoke under WOT, as its running pretty rich at that time.

[ViciousLord]

yeah its pitch black its not blue smoke. i need a AFC, lol. but wheels come first