Hello everyone,

I know the oil burning subject (especially for AP1's) has been beaten to death, but I have a weird one. The car is an 02, 95k miles, intake and test pipe otherwise stock. Well maintained (by me at least, can't speak for previous owners) Just noticed the issue the past four days. When starting the car cold, no issues. I drive maybe a few hundred feet then come to my first stop. I smell burning oil, and notice it smoking from my exhaust. After that, it is fine. No oil smell the rest of the drive, no smoke. It does NOT smoke at start up or first acceleration, only while it hits maybe two bars on the temp gauge, otherwise its perfect. The car was switched to Honda synthetic about 3k miles ago, previous to that just regular Honda oil. I have had no other issues with the car before this. I have not performed a compression test or leak down test yet, just wondering if anyone can throw ideas at me. PCV valve, valve guide seals, retainers (could they even cause this) or rings? I am kinda at a loss right now, and upset. I have never had any potential catastrophic issues with any other cars in my life, and this is my baby. I hope this made some sense to you all, and thanks for any help.

Ian

 

I would hazard a guess that oil is leaking down onto the exhaust or header from the upper engine area, or maybe the rear engine seal. It becomes noticeable when the exhaust gets hot enough to burn the oil off. Likely a very small leak so it doesn't last long once the initial oil burns off. If you had bad valve seals it would show up at first start up and at other times during the drive, same thing with other engine issues. I would say your engine is probably pretty healthy internally, but you are getting some type of leak ending up on the exhaust from above. Leaky valvecover gasket, leaky engine seal, etc..., we dont have much information to go by, but that would be my best guess.

 

Thank you for that. An oil leak was at the back of my head, but with cars I always assume the worse lol. I know I am on the stock valve cover gasket, so it could be starting to let go.

 

i have the same issue but if its hot out it might be coolent not oil.
White smoke=coolent and thats the color that comes out my exhuast during hard drives ):