My Cooper has done about 5500 of mostly motorway cruising miles and the dipstick this week end when i checked it was not all that far above MIN. Is this normal?
My previous car, an MX-5, used to go 10,000 miles without seeming to use a drop of oil. My Minis always used tons of oil but I expected that... I'm guessing its worse because its a new car and will improve once the engine is properly loosened up.
I checked mine at 4000 miles and it is on max. As I did not check it when delivered, I do not know if it was overfilled to start with. The coolant is not far off min though and has been since I took delivery.
I was quite surprised to see on Saturday when following my wife home from the dealer, smoke on the overun, maybe our real Minis have given us bad driving habits using 'engine braking' as much as the brake peddle. Reg oil level checks req.d until run in I think!
You can expect to use some oil on a new engine because it takes time for the rings to seat. A lot of car companies use low viscosity oil to improve efficiency when the engine is cold and it tends to go past the rings until it warms up.
When I picked up my car in Dec, the salesman said that I would need to top it up with synthetic oil after 4000 miles. The reason given was that "these new engines burn oil to reduce fuel consumption." Anyway, after 2000 miles I checked the oil level, and lo and behold it had dropped to midway between MAX and MIN...
I read about this in the car care section of Popular Mechanics a long time ago. Engines pollute more when they are cold, so thin oil or a low weight multivis is used to reduce friction (flows faster cold) and that reduces emissions. A friend of mine had a Ford that came with 5W20 multivis!
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