[MetroMPG]

^ Oh stop it.


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By chance, I discovered the conditions that cause the most oil consumption in this car: high engine vacuum.

There's one long-ish hill I regularly go down in 3rd gear, in fuel cut mode. I happened to glance in the rearview mirror and saw a cloud of smoke just when I got back on the gas (combustion re-commenced).

I even heard the engine ping briefly when combustion re-started ... that's gotta be a fair amount of oil in the cylinders to make it ping. The tail pipe is also oily inside.

I repeated the test on another hill and saw/heard the same result.

So... rings or valve seals?