Blue smoke and burning oil

CHEVYBOY09

MEMBER
2001 CHEVROLET SILVERADO
V8
4WD
AUTOMATIC
103,000 MILES

My Chevy truck burns oil when I put a strain on the engine. And it burns a lot. About 2 qts in 10 miles. But under driving conditions such as around town it doesn't burn a drop. Only when I floor the gas or pull a trailer heavier than 7000 lbs. I've been a shade tree mechanic for years and I think I have it narrowed down to either the piston rings or valve seals but I don't really know for sure and don't have money to just explore it so what do you think?

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

Unfortunately it sounds like the motor is about to fail. It will most likely continue running but get lower in power the longer it goes. However, if you stop putting oil in it, it will seize.

Here is a guide that helps with blue smoke and oil burning:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/blue-smoke-from-engines-exhaust

The likely cause is the piston rings for this amount of oil. Unfortunately valve seals just don't get this much oil to them in order to leak that bad.

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/replace-engine-piston-rings

I would suggest running a compression test and that will most likely show the issue as well. You can have an oil control ring issue and still have compression but at this point I suspect you are going to have low compression as well which will confirm we are going to need to take serious action.

Let us know if you have questions. Thanks