At least a quart a week, sometimes more. I know I'm going to need to do something major (engine swap or piston rings) soon, I just can't afford it yet. In the meantime, is there anything I can do to reduce the amount of oil being burned, or am I just going to have to deal with it?

Not without further damaging things. Better to just let it eat oil because anything you add to stop that will cause more wear by makeing the oil flow improperly.

 

Does it smoke constantly or only on acceleration, etc? Could it be valve guides? That might be a pretty easy fix - head gasket job and $100 to $150 to have the head rebuilt.....

 

I'm not familiar enough with the Toyota engines to say what generally fails on that one but ring failure is not common anymore on anything and frankly Toy's are known for durrable engines.

 

GD

I suppose it could be valve guides, I'm only going off what I've heard from the p.o. and a friend of mine who works at a shop. During normal driving it burns oil, just not enough to see it coming out of the tailpipe. If it sits and idles for awhile, when I start to drive away it leaves a nice cloud of smoke. It's really noticeable when I accelerate hard, it'll leave a trail of smoke.

I don't know if it will help, but a product I really like is Schaeffer's #132 Moly E.P.

rear main seal? if theres one thing i know about yotas its when they get a lot of miles they go thru a bunch of oil

 

 

 

RV

Its just burning oil, it doesn't leak at all

Sounds like valve guides to me. The loading up at idle and the cloud on acceleration would seem to indicate valve guides. Rings are usually more consistent with their smoking. Lots of smoke all the time and increasing with RPM's. Those are just general rules though.

 

Run a wet/dry compression test and I bet you find the rings are ok.

 

GD