If this is the wrong forum, mods feel free to move...

Anyways, quick and to the point..

I'm stationed in Korea so I decided not to bring my s2k over here.

I'm driving a beater for the time being ($200 91 hyundai elantra), and its giving me some trouble. I'm not very mechanically inclined so any advice would be appreciated. While I was driving today, there was an excessive amount of smoke coming out the exhaust (and I mean a lot). The oil low light has been comin off and on for some time now, so I've been adding a squart of oil every half week. So pretty much I'm assuming that my cars eating up oil. Just wondering if there's anything that I can do to try and fix this myself, so I can save some money, or should I just take it to a shop. Thanks in advance.

Rich

 

If it's chewing up oil like that it's likely blown a gasket or seal somewhere and oil is leaking into the engine. It could be expensive to get it repaired.

 

Moving to Car Talk.

 

That's not a low oil light. It's an oil pressure light. If you're not pumping any oil to the engine, the light goes on. In other words, you are doing damage to your engine every time that light comes on.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that your cylinders are probably scored. Your bearings probably took a beating as well, due to oil starvation. If you were to do a compression test, you'd learn more about what you're dealing with. I'm guessing that this car is also hard to start, especially with a warm engine on a humid day.

 

Could be a number of things, but it's most likely bad rings or bad valve seals.. neither of which is a cheap/easy fix, although I'd rather have bad valve seals... low oil pressure will eventuallly blow your motor.. fix it fast.

 

Unless you just have leak out the bottom, I'd just keep putting oil in it until it dies, then go get another $200 car. There's not much, other than a leak, that can be fixed for less than $200 for the symptoms you describe.