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A fellow MGA owner recently asked my advice regarding what he considered excessive oil use by his car. The short of it is that he appears to have an incorrect oil dipstick in his engine. I say that because he reports that after doing an oil change and putting in the prescribed amount of oil (9 pints), the oil line was still below the "full" or "max" line. So he added more oil to get to the full line. He should have just put in the 9 pints and stopped there. But I think a common "cause" of oil burning MGAs and possibly MGBs is that the average owner adds a full quart of oil when the oil level falls from the max line to the min line. Wrong! That 3/8" distance between the two lines represents only one PINT, not a quart. Your engine will quickly get rid of the extra pint and you will swear you have an oil burner. But you probably don't. Comments?
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MGA Oil Burning MGAs
- Thread starter DonHolle
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aeronca65t
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Over 30 years ago, my best friend and I both had 1500 MGAs (in high school). I recall that both cars blew out the first pint of oil very quickly, so that when we did oil changes, we always left them "a half quart low". I always assumed that it was "the nature of the beast"
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aerog
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Another false assumption is that the vehicle is "burning" oil. As Nial related many engines will just naturally blow off a certain amount of oil (within reason obviously). If the oil level drops suddenly to the "low" mark, for example, but never drops further then it isn't actually losing oil through the rings, leaks, etc. You can at least make note of what is, in reality, "full" oil level compared to the stick (making allowances for filters, oversized oil pans - I see that on VW engines, etc) by just filling to spec, running the engine for a minute, then let it settle and check the dipstick reading.
I have to admit not having seen this problem in my MG, but it's common with airplane engines. All our 6-cyl engines are supposed to be topped off with 12-qt of oil, but typically they'll all drop down to +/- 10qt after an oil change (after running for an hour or so) but never drop beyond that.
I have to admit not having seen this problem in my MG, but it's common with airplane engines. All our 6-cyl engines are supposed to be topped off with 12-qt of oil, but typically they'll all drop down to +/- 10qt after an oil change (after running for an hour or so) but never drop beyond that.