Lexus consuming oil

[jackcramerr]

I think the is250 is consuming oil. I drained the oil today and less then 5.5 litre came out. I replaced the oil filter as well.

 

Car had failed emissions on lambda values as well. Is it related ? Never thought I would see this day. Car's been always serviced on time. Sad day.

[johnatg]

Depends when it was last checked to be full and also how long it had to drain down after stopping the engine, and did the 5.5 ltrs or whatever include what came out of the filter?. You'll always get a good deal less than the full capacity of 6.3 litres when draining.

[jackcramerr]

I had topped it up by a litre not too long ago as I had seen some warning message about oil for a fraction of a second.

 

 

[Linas.P]

Filter keeps ~0.6L, so it is important to consider whenever the drain includes filter or not. 

Assuming it is 10k miles service 5.5L would be well within normal, to be fair Lexus has ridiculous limits - something like a quart (0.95L) every 1000 miles. So 0.8L over 10k is very healthy engine. My old one toward 200k miles (so sort of after 160k) was burning ~ 1L between services, as I always used to have small bother of Magnatec in the boot. As well it would be burning noticeably more towards the end of, so maybe 0.2L for first 6k miles and then 0.8L for second 6k miles. That said I simply switched to 6k mile service intervals thereafter and oil burning pretty much disappeared or it was too little to notice. 10k miles is actually a lot for the oil and I do not recommend it, 6k miles are much more appropriate (that is as well what Lexus would do all across metric world 10k kilometres). Other thing to note - depends on the oil, Magnatec or whatever standard oil Lexus was using would be as I said ~1L per 10k miles, but I had Mobil 1 Extra Long life 0W40 once and it did not burn anything at all.

Other important thing to note - oil has to be checked regularly, at least every other fill-up, which in my case would have been once a month when I was driving more. Few times this saved me, because I realised service has underfilled the oil. In such case not only you start with less oil, but it burns quicker when amount is insufficient and if it is left unchecked between the services this can result in very sad outcome.

 

[jackcramerr]

This service was at 7k miles. I changed filter every time. Been using Magnetic A5 5w30.

 

Might be unrelated but I noticed that the engine light turned off after the oil change. The engine light was for P0420 and P0430.

 

I also have identified source of exhaust leak and during idling water drips from the area. Its where the back exhaust meets the mid section on the off side.

[Linas.P]

7 minutes ago, jackcramerr said:

I had topped it up by a litre not too long ago as I had seen some warning message about oil for a fraction of a second.

Ok - so worst case scenario, it burns ~1.8L of Magnatec every 7k miles. That would be well within acceptable range. What is the mileage?

All in all, I found that my IS250 quite liked sipping Magnatec, so potential solution is to go for Edge or Mobil1 XL.

[Texas]

It all adds up……

P0420 & P0430,EML, lambda issue and exhaust leak.

see post no 8 here

 

[Linas.P]

Yes codes could be related to exhaust leak, but not the engine oil. 

[Texas]

As I have said before ‘humans love coincidence’ 

You may very well have Two separate problems and this may fog your fault finding logic as people perceive there only to be One thing wrong that needs fixing when presented with multiple symptoms.

[Spock66]

13 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Yes codes could be related to exhaust leak, but not the engine oil. 

If the engine is burning oil then this may cause problems with the cat and lambda sensors.

I think the first step is to establish exactly how much oil is being consumed.

[Linas.P]

22 minutes ago, Spock66 said:

If the engine is burning oil then this may cause problems with the cat and lambda sensors.

I think the first step is to establish exactly how much oil is being consumed.

So far the amount of oil being burnt is well within spec. i.e 1.8L over 7000 miles isn't a problem.

[jackcramerr]

Car has done in the range of 90k miles in total.

 

 

[johnatg]

Come, come - that's unnecessarily pessimistic. That engine will do 250K miles or more. Even if it does burn a little oil along the way.

[Texas]

1 litre of oil consumption allowable every 1,000 Km ( 600 Miles!) before the engine is out of Manufacture Specification's…..but in UK car will prob fail HC test at MOT time long before this!!!! But engine (car) will function quite satisfactory for a good while longer without doubt.

Source of info ( after being challenged on a different forum all my posts will contain official source of facts🙄)

[Linas.P]

16 hours ago, pope111 said:

Piston rings gone. Full rebuild or new engine. After 100k usually dead. Avoid this car and engine with high miles.

Absolute nonsense. All cars of all makes burns some oil, before 100k miles it is usually so little that it is not noticeable between the services, but the more miles car has the more likely is to burn more oil. IS250 is not exception and it is just about average compared to other cars in this regard. Now sure - Toyota have used "low tension" rings on their petrol engines since like 1998 (and till uses them), in fact most DI petrol engines uses them, and these rings have tendency to let more oil through as they wear, but in other hand they improve fuel efficiency significantly as they create less drag. Rebuilding the engine because it burns ~2L of oil between the services is ridiculous suggestion.

As well, mileage is kind of wrong measurement here as most of the wear is causes by starting cold engine, so better measurement would be "engine cycles". As such 60k miles car in the city with 6000 engine cycles will burn more oil that car with 120k miles which was used on longer trips and maybe has only 2000 engine cycles.

My advice for jack would be simply to make sure correct amount of oil is added this time and monitor it for next 6000 miles (that would be my recommended service interval), if car requires more than 1L of top-up, then consider using higher quality oil (fully-synthetic like Edge, Magnatec is hydrocracked-synthetic)... well or simply keep some oil in the car (I know - revolutionary idea... who would ever thought about that!). 

 

[Linas.P]

2 hours ago, pope111 said:

Then again i know some cars with 150k and more that do not burn oil.🤔

First of all 15k kilometres servicing is just not good practice, yes I know that in UK people tend to do it every 10k miles because manufacturers rounded it like this to make it easier to understand and more appealing for fleet managers. As well I guess it gives this false sense of "care free motoring" for society where many people only ever owns cars for 3-5 years and do not care what happens to the cars after that.

However, from purely maintenance point of view 6k miles is the most one should do between oil changes if they care about keeping the engine in good condition. There is as well time aspect - so if car does 40k miles in a year, it would be acceptable to do 4 services every 3 month/10k miles, but if car only did 5k miles in a year it would be best to still replace oil after 1 year. Then there is the engine cycles vs. miles - cars which on short drives should get their own changes more often, than ones which do longer journeys. In fact even Lexus maintenance manual clearly states that - only "lightly" used cars qualifies for 10k miles extended service, all other cars must be services more often - every 6k or even every 3k miles. What is considered heavy use is for example driving in traffic, so almost no cars in UK qualifies for extended service, but most of them only get that.

I agree that Lexus allowances are a bit wild and that engine would be effectively toast before it ever reaches this point, but we not talking about 1L/600miles in this case and I am yet to see IS250 which burns so much oil. In my case car was burning 0.6L from the time I bought it with 122k miles and pretty much done the same all the way to 200k. I estimate by 200k miles it burned ~1L between services, but I never cared about it because I always did oil change every 6k miles and it was rarely significant enough that I would have to top-up. On few occasions I added like 0.4l at 5k miles, but then did the oil change 1k miles later anyway.

[H3XME]

On 4/26/2022 at 7:30 PM, pope111 said:

If it burns 1L or more in 1000km then the engine is toasted. Lets say your yearly mileage is 15k km then you add 15 Liters oil on top🤣 plus your annual oil service. How is that considered normal 🤣 This is absolute nonsense.

Iv seen that on several cars. Usually starts after 100k with small half liter burn and goes fast from there. Some cases engine smokes bad, shakes/vibrates and has loss of power. Is it due bad maintenance or some manufacturer issue I cant tell, but it does happen.

Fast fix is to buy low mile 4GR front cut from japan. This engine is used in many models.

Then again i know some cars with 150k and more that do not burn oil.🤔

Mine is on 169,000 miles and doesn't burn anything.. oil gets changed every 7000 miles so twice a year, but yeah, I don't care what the book says, if your car is burning 1L every 1,000km/600miles, you have a problem despite the book suggesting it's "ok" 😂