Fiesta 1.25 Zetec S Burning Oil

[mollytherocker]

Hi

Just bought a 98 Fiesta and serviced it (15w40 Syth TOTAL). It puts a little blue smoke out when you rev it hard.

I assume the rings are a little worn. Can I use STP or similar on this engine to tighten it up a little?

Any advice very welcome!

[Jon GT2]

I wouldn't and it should have 5-30 oil in it really.High mileage baby Zetecs do tend to burn a bit of oil i assume most people live with it or fit a short motor.

[NST]

used to own a 99v 1.25 Zetec, never used any oil during the time i had from new. after 55K i gave the car to my little brother who has no mechanical care at all! he rags it from cold which has definitely had some knock effects on the engine. the last 10K it has it started to use oil probably about 1/2 litre every 10K (currently done 95k).

[Damian S]

If you want to check for worn rings, once the engine is warm, pull the dipstick out and then rev (get someone to to id if need be) the engine. if smoke pours from the dipstick hole when rev'ed then the rings / bores are worn. Not much you can do, other than get the engine rebuilt / reconditioned / replaced with a lower mileage second hand unit. Its probably not be worth the cost though.

It will continue to get worse over time, but that just means the engine will loose a bit of poke, fuel economy may drop a bit, it will need topping up with oil regularly, and it will smell when the heaters are on. Thrashing it from cold has simply just brought forward the inevitable IMO.

I think this is fairly common on smaller engines. They have a relatively hard life, ie rev fairly high and work pretty hard to pull the load.

[RDE]

Sorry to drift slightly, but how many miles do you usually get to a tank? I've just started driving my sisters 1.25 and it does fewer miles than my Puma, on what I think is the same size tank. I'm getting about 250 or so. Tyre pressures haven't made a difference.

[NiallOswald]

At Easter I had the 1.6 Zetec-SE in my Focus replaced (new short block) for exactly this reason. It seems to be one of those 'they all do that, sir' things. I'm hoping that regular oil changes will prevent the problem happening again before I sell the car - I avoid thrashing it from cold but if any sort of progress is required revving it to death is kind of unavoidable. 25mpg out of the last tank of petrol.

[mollytherocker]

RDE said - Sorry to drift slightly, but how many miles do you usually get to a tank? I've just started driving my sisters 1.25 and it does fewer miles than my Puma, on what I think is the same size tank. I'm getting about 250 or so. Tyre pressures haven't made a difference.

I reckon i get about 250 a tank too. I would think that the Puma has a bigger tank?

[RDE]

Cheers for that. Puma has about 42litres I think. I'll try the old calculator to see what mpg i'm getting.

[vino187]

puma and fiesta have the same size tank as their basically the same. my fiesta zetec-s 1.6 used to do 280 on a tank and that cost 35 quid to fill from empty. my dads old 1.25 did over 300 and had done 60000 miles when he sold it.