UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Hi all, first post!!!

Basically my 1999 1.6GL Polo is consuming what i deem to be too much oil. I bought the car in mid Jan and by the end of Feb on, the way back from a long trip, the oil light came on and the engine was loud. Luckily i was 5 miles away from my girlfriends house. I stopped there, left the car for an hour and checked the oil level. It was barely on the very end of the dipstick - NOT GOOD! I went out and bought some castrol 5w/40 (at £44.99 no less!) and filled the beast back up.

That was 4 weeks ago. About 2 weeks ago i checked my oil level and it was slightly under full, which i thought was fair enough. Today i check it and its in the low portion of the dipstick. I still have 1ltr of oil left in the bottle which im gunna have to use. So my car has used 3 litres (ish) of oil in a month.

I had my MOT last week and asked the garage to check out any oil leaks. They found none. Also my car isnt leaving any puddles on the ground.

What dyu guys think it could be?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Chaosphere

Wrong oil for one. Polos use 10W/40. 5W/40 is too thin for these engines

It sounds like you have a leak of some sort - what colour is your coolant? Is your exhaust spitting black or smoke at all?

Its possible one of the oil channels has cracked, and you are therefore burning oil.

Also 1999 is a Mk4 polo so you may get more of a response in the Mk4 section Wikipedia lists it as a MkIII, but thats the VW name, where as its know by a different number.

These engines burn very little, if any oil full stop

My coolant is pink, the G12 type i believe. The wrong type maybe the problem however i was advised to buy 5W 30 (not 5w 40 as previously posted - my bad!) by castrols website and a sales assistant in halfords said 10w 40 or 5w 30 didnt really matter apart from the synthetic/semi synthetic choice.

Apologies about posting in the wrong section. I previously had a MKIIF - i guess you guys count that as the MKIII?

Could this be moved to the MKIV section?

Any oil in the coolant at all? Yes thats G12 bud

If you are already on synthetic now, you cannot switch back to semisynthetic as it can damage the engine

Ya MkIIf is a Mk3 in forum terminology

Ill see if I can get an admin to move it

*UPDATE*

My car was billowing puffs of black smoke occasionally so i took it to the garage and of course, as was stated by alexperkins, they pointed pointed out that the 5w/30 oil was indeed too thin so i'veh ad a full oil change and my breathers cleaned out.

Fingers crossed that fixs the problem!