Our 1998 Vanden Plas has 98K miles on it and is starting to use oil. There are no exterior leaks and the engine looks brand new. There are no visible emissions problems such as smoke out of the exhaust pipe. I cleaned out the partial ventilator tube. I noticed a band of oil on of the air cleaner filter about 3 inches wide all the way around it. The car used a quart of oil on a 250 mile trip. Could the oil be leaking inside the engine (bad gaskets)? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

I would expect a bit of oil to be used at that sort of mileage, but not all that much. So how much is it using ? What usually happens is the oil seals on the valve guides harden up with age and heat. They can be replaced, but its an expensive job as the valve springs have to come off and that normally means cylinder head removal.
Some mechanics have been known to be deft with a length of rope into the combustion chamber via the plug hole to hold the valves closed while they remove the valve springs and put a new seal on, but I only heard about this in relation to MG Midget engines. For a V8, it would take many hours to do every cylinder, and we know labour is not cheap !

The oil band on your aircleaner element sounds like you are getting a lot of oil mist out of the crankcase pressure relief valve. This vents to the inlet side of the engine. Does everything else seem AOK ?

 

Thanks for your response. Would there be any benefit to doing a compression test on each cylinder?
Everything else on the car looks and runs great. We had the timing chain and tensioners replaced and upgraded. The transmission was rebuilt two years ago.