I swear I checked my oil the one day and it read half over add then only one week later I began smelling burnt oil oh oh and checked it again, quarter under add. I topped it back and a week later its still fine. My question is can a highway run of about 60 miles eat up 3/4 of a quart, be fine the following week and not show any obvious signs of consumption eg. leaking, overheating, blow by etc. I suspect it must be something internal that at speed is more noticable. valve guides maybe?
PS after a few hundred miles, my oil is still clear, Ive never had oil stay clean that long before it must be that wix filter- valve chatter gone too at start up which I got with the fram fram going to find me and sue me now

I've heard of Ford L6's eating lots of oil on the hwy, but none around town, but never a /6. It guess it could happen if something gets hot and leaks, but closes up when cold.

Look at the plugs for one that sees oil sometimes.

If it shows up again, you might try a thicker oil or a thickening agent like MotorMedic, STP, or Lucas. I've had good luck using Motor Honey to greatly reduce on oil consumption. It never seemed to have any adverse effect that I could see.

[I have read an article that cautioned that Lucas etc. could cause foaming and hurt lubrication, but I've never seen any evidence for it myself. It did seem to me that the tests in the article didn't mimic a Mopar oil system very well, as there should be no air present in the pump.]

A sticking or clogged PCV valve will do that.
Be sure to check the hole into the carb and intake, sometimes these get plugged or "coked-up" and reduce the high speed crankcase venting.
A mis-installed or incorrect carb to intake gasket will also cause this problem.
DD

All misc. parts are new including pcv and hose. I noticed initially that #3 cylinder fouled when experimenting with synthetic 5w30 ( howww looow can you gooo) but that proved to thin. Due to financial constraint I reluctedly went back to dino 10w30. With the amount of gunk that used to be in this engine when i bought it, and now its cleaned, I guess things will take awhile to seal properly again if at all.
I used to use Lucas gas treatment religiously in my suburban for it had an injector, the slant, maybe not so but have used STP fuel for it.

The test that you're talking about was probably the one on Bob is the Oil Guy. He was trying to evaluate the usefulness of that gear climbing behavior that they show off on their displays, which is really only useful in things like manual transmissions or differentials where there is no oil pump. The frothing is less likely to happen inside an engine - then again, the gear climbing behavior isn't very useful there, either.

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"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

Have you noticed that it is much harder to turn the 'better' oil than the 'plain' oil at the same speed on the display model............

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

has anyone heard of the new "super light weight" (0w 30) oils not having enough added zinc in them to make brand new cams fail? there was a pretty interesting article in Hot Rod about it

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1975 Plymouth Duster,225/6 2bbl. and duels, 904, 7 1/4
1986 Dodge Charger Shelby, 2.2 Turbo I, A525

Define "brand new" cams... during the break-in period I wouldn't dream of using anything lighter than at least a 10-30 and I'd stick with conventional oil as well. (As far as I know all 0-30's are synthetic.)

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Used to own:
'82 Dodge D150
Erson 270 Cam, O/S valves, mild port work, ~9.5:1 compression

Currently fighting with an '85 VW Cabriolet

My other passion