Why is my Kia Seltos consuming so much oil?

Kia Seltos 2020
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I have a 2020 Kia Seltos with 50,000km on the clock. It has been serviced regularly and on schedule at my local Kia dealership. A couple of months ago it started to have some engine problems, cutting out for no reason and finally the oil light came on. The car was completely out of oil!

There had been no oil leaks or smoke from the exhaust, nor had the oil light come on previously. I took it to the dealership and they started a series of oil consumption tests at 1000km intervals. It was using 600ml of oil per 1000km. Then I got an urgent recall letter from Kia Australia indicating that the engine needed to be inspected to check if it had been fitted with faulty piston rings. I booked it in to the Kia dealership and it apparently passed the inspection. How is that possible?

That’s a great question and suggests you shouldn’t take no for an answer in this case. Plenty of modern cars use a bit of oil (actually, all engines use some oil) thanks to the low-tension piston rings fitted to improve fuel economy. Swings and roundabouts. But 600ml of oil in 1000km is not something you can ignore.

Had the car always used this much oil, there’s a chance that this is 'normal' oil consumption. But the fact that the consumption has suddenly jumped up to the point where the engine ran out of oil makes me think that there might be a problem. Some oil consumption is normal, but it’s when the engine’s drinking habits change that you can have the beginning of a problem.

The fact Kia has admitted some engines had been fitted with poor quality piston rings, would make me think your car is one of the affected ones and should be fixed at Kia’s cost. I’d be curious to know what inspection the dealership conducted to assess your engine. One possibility would be to have the engine independently tested and assessed in terms of its cylinder compression and what’s called a leak-down test. This will give a much better idea of the condition of the engine’s internals and what’s needed.

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