Camry is burnin oil at 147k miles

[MadDawg]

i got a 1996 camry le... and i had a mechanic look for an oil leak, unfortanantly he couldnt find one at all... and so i dont know what do to, and i mean, its using a qrt every 1000 miles, it doesnt smoke, it doesnt run funny, i dont get it! darn 5sfe is friggen thirsty i guess... hmm, any suggestions? i just bought tokico hp struts and they should arive in a couple weeks or so... just the thought of rebuilding the engine at low miles just plain makes me wanna

[BLUEMEANIE]

you usin 10w30 or 5w30?

[MadDawg]

i think its just the regular stuff toyota has always been putting it in there... although maybe 15k miles ago i tried synthetic mobil 1 and it did used it like regular oil... would that have anything to do with the burning oil?

what can i do to get it to stop short of rebuilding the engine? engine flush?

[BLUEMEANIE]

I'd just use regular ol' 5w30 oil. Synthetic is thinner than regular oil with marginally better coating properties.
A lot of guys on the C3 Vette loop use synthetic after a rebuild thinkin its better and end up with burning problems and leaks, I only put straight 30 weight in my 76 C3 after the full rebuild and I never had any troubles.

You didn't mix them did you? You need to do a full flush when you switch to synthetic and/or back to regular oil.

[Keep]

The Engine Oil Bible <---(click me)

All your questions will be answered in this detailed document.

[MadDawg]

its strange that it doesnt smoke, even when you start it up, you get a really really small slight white puff of smoke come out, but nothing similar to any car ive ever seen when you start it in the morning. yet its burning oil... could it be.... hmm... no, i dont think we mixed the oil when we did the switch from regular to syntec, but after syntec changed out we did regular toyota oil... could that be it?