FINALLY found reason for oil usage

[spingley]

Well after months of trying to figure out why my 2000 Prizm was going thru oil like there was no tomorrow, it turns out the oil filler cap was bad. I had pulled the plugs after doing a search on this site for oil usage but they looked almost like new, I could not see any oil dripping from the engine anywhere but around the oil filler and I assumed that was from when my wife was adding oil she was just dumping it, but found out she had been using a funnel. Then a friend mentioned that he had a car that had a bad cap so I looked at the filler cap and the rubber gasket was dried up and shrunk back into the cap and was doing nothing. Next I started the engine and removed the cap and the back pressure was actually slowly pushing a film of the oil up the sides of the hole and spraying it out, not a lot mind you but add up hours of driving and it can be significant. Two of the many quarts of oil I have put in there would have paid for the new cap from Autozone, if I had only known!! Now it hardly uses any oil at all. UPDATE-Actually I had meant to post this in the 8th generation forums but maybe this will apply to 7th generation engines also.