1997 Saturn burning oil

Yes, mine burns oil too.

Add oil.

My '94 has used oil since I bought it new. In most cases, it's not an indication of impending doom. Make sure you check it often, and don't neglect your oil changes. It's cheaper to add a quart here and there than to rebuild the motor - which isn't even guaranteed to fix it. Especially if the car is running perfectly otherwise.

Lane [ l a n e @ p a i r . c o m ]

Find a different dealer! There's about 5 different things they should check/try before they tear apart the engine. Do a Google groups search on this newsgroup for burning oil and you'll find multiple discussions on the subject.

Saturns are supposedly infamous for burning oil, but I wouldn't condemm it just yet.

• Are you leaveing a blue clound?

• Is it excessive (say, a quart every 500 miles)?

• Has the engine performance, or milege drastically changed recently?

• Is it increasing in compsuption?

• Do you fail emission tests on high hydrocarbons?

If you answered 'no' for all of this, then I'd just keep an eye on it and not worry. FWIW, I don't think you need to tear apart the motor to find a ring or valve stem seal problem, w.r.t. oil consumption, and if it's the latter, you don't need to tear apart everything anyway...

How much oil does it burn? I've had my Saturn since it was new (1992). It has now 260K miles on it and it burns about 1.5 quarts every 5 months. I've been feeding it Castrol Syntec 5W50 ever since it was about

Alex

Keep putting in oil or there are local garages that well do the work for cheaper. I would also get better rings and stuff put in. try