General End of life Fiat Oil usage

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General End of life Fiat Oil usage

TonySteele

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Feb 17, 2019
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My Fiat Stilo is coming to the end of it's life unfortunately.

She has only 100,000 on the clock but when I bought her a couple of years ago she wasnt in the best health and I have battled with her for a while.


I have an MOT in November which will confirm the inevitable and also gives me some time to work out what to get next.


Anyway she has started using a silly amount of oil. I drove down to Essex last week, 300 mile round trip, and I used 1ltr of oil.

It has been using more and more oil these last few months but it's getting to a point where it's a wee bit costly.

There is no sign of any leaks, and my conclusion it is worn out piston rings and or seals.

I have seen these 'Stop Oil Leak' products on Amazon however I am skeptical they will help with the amount I am using.

I use 10W40 currently and it's a 1.6 04.

Apart from simply constantly topping her up with Oil these next few weeks does anyone have any advice?
 
Hi
Sorry to read.
I would advise to stay away from any "miracle" additive that might stop oil leak etc.

Since you don't want to spend a lot of money on the car it is useless performing any compression test wet or dry etc.

My advise would be:
• use an oil with thicker viscosity not sure but 10w60 might do the trick.
• keep your revs low..
• use brake to slow down and not gears to slow down.
 
Last edited:
I had the same on my 1.8 a few years ago.

Think is that cheap engine oil i.e say Halfords 10w40 is £24 for 5Litres, which would last you 1500 miles, whereas @ say 30 to the gallon, the fuel for the same miles would cost you at least £250 :eek:.

Got to say that if it were mine, I would simply cough up the £24, and worry about something more major happening come MoT time :D
 
If it's burning that much, it's probably a knackered valve stem seal. It's a head-off job to fix it. YoOu can burn less oil by running a 20W50 or 10W60 etc. It won't matter too much in the summer.. although the oil pump would struggle a bit more in the depths of winter.

100k is barely run in though, so it's a pity to scrap it, if it just needs a £3 part (and £300 to fit it :D )..


Ralf S.
 
I would suggest you do an oil flush on the car, with a proprietary additive or even just a litre of diesel or paraffin as a solvent to help loosen any residues or sticky rings etc. Drain fully after a 15 minute fast idle.

Then fill with a High Mileage oil like Valvoline MaxLife, these can help seals and rings recover their properties and reduce oil consumption. Your normal grade would bw 10W/40 but you could go a bit thicker as mentioned.

But you should look for smoke from the exhaust when you accelerate to confirm if you are actually burning oil. Ifv it smokes more on startup that would indicate oil leaking from the head into the cylinders when at rest.

You could consider a compression check too, that would indicate individual faults in the pistons / cylinders.
 
Not sure what TonySteele did with his 1.6, but I've noticed that my Abarth is starting to use a bit of oil as well :(, possibly worse like 250 miles to the Litre.

My solution is as suggested 2 years ago, whereby I've bought 5 Litres of cheap Supermarket oil (Shell HX5 15W-40) for €15.29 (£13) which with current prices seemed to be a veritable bargain :cool:.
 
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