What causes the engine to burn large amounts of oil? (and blow it out of the exhaust)

T

tinustate

Member
About an hour ago i started my bmw z4 2005 and put it in the rear and lifted the clutch to ride backwards of my driveway.

I suddenly noticed that a i couldn't see the road anymore, a huge smoke cloud coming from the exhaust, filled the entire driveway up to the top of the roof of my house.

After that i quickly turned the engine off and took a look at my oil level, a lot of oil was gone, well below the minimum, even 1 liter of new oil didn't fill it to minimum level.

After i filled it with 1 liter of new oil i turned the engine on shortly to smell the smoke, a lot less smoke came out this time, but still not normal, it smelled like oil. The engine didn't sound ok, so i quickly turned it off again.

I do drive a lot of small distances, about 20 minutes on small country roads a few times a week, in the weekend maybe 40 minutes.

I'm wondering 2 things: Can it do any harm to drive about 15 minutes to indie garage? (i will put some more oil in it) and Any idea of what causes the engine to burn large amounts of oil?
 
Oil can be a number of difference things.

CCV is faulty
Piston rings are worn
Valve stem seals are perished

There may be more, for example a faulty head gasket i think could probably cause problems.

Depending on how it sounds i would probably try to avoid driving it in case you make the problems worse. Have you got AA/RAC or an advanced bank account with breakdown cover?
 
It is probably the crankcase breather system I had it on a 330i looked like something out of a James Bond movie as I was driving down the road. Put more oil in and take it to the garage parts were about £120 from what I remember. Should be about 2-3 hours of labour to fit.
 
Its a bit unusual to suddenly get clouds of smoke like that if it is some sort of engine wear. Normally you would notice a drop in performance and engine starting to use more oil and for oil to get very dirty quickly. Clouds of smoke could be steam ie gasket failure and water getting into the oil but this isnt the case. Lets hope it is the breather system but you need to get it sorted quickly otherwise oil being forced past the pistons with increase crankcase pressure and you will have a knackered engine.
 
One way to check if it's the crankcase breather is to take the oil filler cap off and if the engine runs better there is your problem
 
This is quite a common problem for m54 engines look on YouTube for videos and on eBay for spares.
 
Gazc said:
Here watch this

http://youtu.be/s8irMmWvWfw
Click to expand...
That looks exactly how it looked on my driveway, sure impressive & scared to see that coming out of your car.

Strange thing is that i didn't fiddle with the spark plugs or the car at all in the last weeks. Yesterday i did bring it to my indie for the yearly MOT.

Thumbs up for the other replies :thumbsup: , i read that there could me many many things wrong with it, hope my garage can figure out what exactly. I will do a bit of research on all given causes to make me understand them a bit better.

Makes me wonder: can i drive 15 minutes with a bad ccv? (don't mind the smoke, hope i don't get pulled of the road by the police though)
 
Yes it does scare you I was driving along and looked in the mirror and could see nothing not even the road. New ccv and pipes and it was fine.
 
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