Re: V6 oil consumption

[George Tur <gtur@lucent.com>]

The original post by Dan was about high, 1 qt per 1k miles, oil
consumption by his 95 A6.

Our 95 A6 Quattro exhibits the same symptoms. It has a little over 90K
miles on the odometer. I've brought it to the dealer a number of times
and they say that that consumption is acceptable plus they've checked
the engine a number of times for leaks and they've found no indication
of any. Since our other Audis didn't dematerialize oil at that rate, an
87 5ktq with 204k and an 82 5k with over 250k, I brought the car to a
local independent for his opinion.  His diagnosis or opinion  is that
the car is burning the oil through the valves but that we aren't seeing
any exhaust cloud because the cat is vaporizing it. I guess the
assumption here is that the cat is hot enough to reburn the oil in the
exhaust gas so that you don't see a lot of smoke.

Now I'm not knowledgeable enough about the emissions system to say that
he's just blowing smoke or if this is a plausible cause of the high oil
consumption. What does the list think? Now, I did stick my finger up the
Audi's exhaust, no comments about the poking please it was purely for
diagnostic purposes, and there was a lot of soot present. On the other
cars we have I tried the same thing and there was no soot, or very
little compared to the A6. The cars have all had a tune up at the
dealers within the past 6 months so I don't think that should be an
issue here.

George

The neighbors must think I'm nuts poking the fingers up the tail pipes
of all these cars, but I guess that's what an Audi will do to you.