So I am still chasing oil consumption. I now know my oil control rings are the cause after leakdown and compression tests show the engine is fine from that regard. A few months back I used Lubro Moly Pro Line engine flush and the consumption got a lot better (1qt every 1200 miles vs 1qt every 400) for a short time. Then it would go back to normal. I THOUGHT it was CVV related. But a new CVV didn't help. I finally consulted a 25 year BMW master mechanic (a friend of a friend) and he said "is it a M54 3.0?" "Oh yea, that is a real common issue, the oil control rings get caked with crap over the years".
He said to do 5 oil changes with 6qts dino, 16oz of sseafoam (one bottle) and 1/2qt trans fluid. Run it 250 miles, repeat for 5 cycles. He said he has had good success with this method. But, my wife and son got in their accident right in the middle of my second change and because we were down to one car, I had to dump it and go back to synthetic since we only had the one car and I was racking up 100 miles a day between hospital trips and errands and such.
So then I installed my catch can. That alone brought consumption down to about 1 quart per 750 miles.
Today, I decided to go about the routine again to see if I can get the catch can mod to give me over 1200 miles per quart. So did the Lubro Moly Flush again (directions say idle for 10 minutes, I idled for 10, fast idled at 2000rpm for 10 minutes), dumped the oil and went with Penzoil and the required seafoam/ATF concoction.
We shall see if 5 runs (1000 miles) does anything for me. After I am going to go with Castrol Syntec 5w50. I know it is heavy and not BMW spec, but I have 201k miles and change my oil around 5000 miles now. Besides, BMW doesn't recommend oil for OLD, hard worked engines so who cares.
One down side to all this, my damn driver side control arm bushing is bad. Has a small puddle of fluid in the recess and that side of my aluminum plate has some fluid on it too. For reference, they are Lemforder and have less than 40,000 miles on them.
He said to do 5 oil changes with 6qts dino, 16oz of sseafoam (one bottle) and 1/2qt trans fluid. Run it 250 miles, repeat for 5 cycles. He said he has had good success with this method. But, my wife and son got in their accident right in the middle of my second change and because we were down to one car, I had to dump it and go back to synthetic since we only had the one car and I was racking up 100 miles a day between hospital trips and errands and such.
So then I installed my catch can. That alone brought consumption down to about 1 quart per 750 miles.
Today, I decided to go about the routine again to see if I can get the catch can mod to give me over 1200 miles per quart. So did the Lubro Moly Flush again (directions say idle for 10 minutes, I idled for 10, fast idled at 2000rpm for 10 minutes), dumped the oil and went with Penzoil and the required seafoam/ATF concoction.
We shall see if 5 runs (1000 miles) does anything for me. After I am going to go with Castrol Syntec 5w50. I know it is heavy and not BMW spec, but I have 201k miles and change my oil around 5000 miles now. Besides, BMW doesn't recommend oil for OLD, hard worked engines so who cares.
One down side to all this, my damn driver side control arm bushing is bad. Has a small puddle of fluid in the recess and that side of my aluminum plate has some fluid on it too. For reference, they are Lemforder and have less than 40,000 miles on them.