Ford Mondeo - burning oil

bitemebankers

Checked my oil last week (for the first time in ages) and discovered the level had dropped to the "minimum" marker on the dipstick. It's been about six months since the last service. Topping up took about 1l of oil so it's burning about 1l in six months.

The car is about 8 years old and has done 70k miles. What I'm wondering is how much more life is left in the engine? There are no other obvious problems, no changes to fuel economy or anything like that and the bodywork is in pretty good nick.

Should I trade it in for something newer or enjoy the fact that the repayments finish soon so it will be a very cheap car to run going forward?

Foxy-Stoat_3

You should be checking your oil weekly, that way you can top it up when it looks low rather than waiting for the "too late " light to come on and killing the engine. 1ltr in 6 months isn't that bad though.

No problem running a car for the foreseeable future like this until it costs you more in oil than petrol !

You sure your burning it or dropping it or mixing with the water? and was the correct amount of oil was used at the service?

You could buy a compression tester (if its a petrol) and check each cylinder, you may find one is a little low on compression which may indicate worn piston rings.

bitemebankers

Foxy-Stoat wrote: »

You sure your burning it or dropping it or mixing with the water?

Yeah, there's never any oil drips under the car, indicating a leak, and the water reservoir looks clean.

and was the correct amount of oil was used at the service?

Yes.

You could buy a compression tester (if its a petrol) and check each cylinder, you may find one is a little low on compression which may indicate worn piston rings.

Good point. I can probably borrow one.

shown73

You could ask on the "Talkford" forums, whether there might be anything Mondeo specific, perhaps. I know I have to leave mine for a while before checking, nearly had cardiac arrest when I didn't! Is there any blue smoke on startup? Are we talking diesel or petrol?

ShandyAndy_2

A litre of oil in 6 months! :rotfl: that's !!!!!! all!. My first car (fiesta 1.1) used a litre a week!.

Check your oil more regular! I check my water, tyres and oil every week on my 2 cars, it only takes 5 mins.

Its nothing to worry about!

Joe_Horner

Assuing you do about average mileage, that's 1 litre in about 5k miles or (in old money) about 2700 mile per pint. That's higher than you might expect from an engine nowadays, but certainly not "last legs" stuff.

To put it in context, I scrapped my first Mini (a 1959 Mk 1 with 1071 Cooper block fitted but before they became valuable collectors cars) at the point that a 145 mile trip home at the weekend was using about 4 litres of oil. Apart from the occasional smoke screen under load it was still going strong even then!

System

haha, that mini sounds amazing, my caddy uses a fair bit of oil, don't know exactly how much because I do so few miles, but tend to check it every time i drive it, 1l in that time isn't bad

forgotmyname

1.8 engine? Common issue with those. The piston rings wear or stick causing it to use excessive oil.

The engine itself is probably not worn. Just the rings.

But 1L in 6 months would be a trickle if you checked it weekly like your supposed to.

My sister blew her turbo up on a diesel mondeo because of a lack of oil.

bitemebankers

Thanks, folks. Looks like this car is a keeper then. And yeah, maybe I should check the oil more often than once every six months...

Weird_Nev

Yep.
Audi think that 500ml / 1000 miles is acceptable for a new car - that's their warranty threshold. My mate who designs engines for Ford laughs at that, and says that they ensure oil consumption cannot drop the level below safe between services. In practice, the engine should use "none".

Anyway, that oil consumption is well within the bounds of what I would call acceptable.

Re check oil weekly for a while (10 mins after car has stopped, on a level surface, preferably the same level surface each time). Once you've got a handle on it's consumption, you can probably drop that to fortnightly or once a month.

poppasmurf_bewdley

Did you check your oil with the engine hot or cold?

If you did it cold, you wouldn't get an accurate level on your dipstick as oil expands when hot. You should check oil when the engine is hot.

Even so, one litre of oil in six months is not excessive