I bought my car new with 190 miles. Something in the back of my head told me not to get a car with that many miles, but I did it anyway.

Now at 2,500 miles, I've consumed almost 1qt. I don't think it's excessive, but my previous two cars were a G35 sedan and a FX35 and none of them consumed more than 1/8 of a qt (8k in G and 29k in FX35) with 5k mile oil change intervals. I followed Infiniti's break-in procedure, but who knows what happended in the first 190 miles. I also drive my coupe much harder (after breakin) than I did with the sedan and the FX.

So my question is... for those who had oil consumption issues in the beginning (less than 8k miles), did the oil consumption get much better as you racked more miles? I understand several have had the dealer replace the long block or the entire engine. I'm asking the ones that kept their engine past 15k-30k miles with the oil consumption issues.

I'm going to get my oil changed at the dealer this weekend with dino oil, and plan to mention it to the dealer. I'm not going to ask for a oil consumption test yet since it's not that bad. My guess is that the rings aren't properly seated.

So, here's my plan to seat the rings or whatever else for the next 2,500 miles. I figure since a lot of folks are saying the VQ takes upto 15k miles to completely breakin, I might still have a very slim chance. I plan to do this at least once every other day.
1) Warm up the engine completely (I don't have an oil temperature sensor, so that'll be about twenty minutes of highway driving)
2) From about 5 mph in 1st gear, floor it until I almost hit redline (~6.8k RPM) and completely let go of the accelerator. No brakes. Drive around regularly for about a minute or two.
3) Repeat step two (upto three to five times)
4) Check oil level every other day first thing in the morning and add additional oil as necessary.

I don't think I'm doing anything that's really bad for the car. I'll let you know if this improves the oil consumption issue.

I also saw this website and found it interesting. It's a bit late for me though.

http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm

 

i fill 5qt's in my car per every 3000 mile oil and oilfilter change and i empty out just about 4.8 qts at the next 3000 mile change. it's been like this since 2003 day one up to my current 46K mile odometer reading.

 

I think a lot of us are in the loss of oil dept. I don't think it is because you had 190 miles on it when you picked it up. I changed my oil 2 weeks ago and I replaced almost 1/2 qt yesterday. I don't like it to get below 4.5 qts. But then again maybe it is because I like to red line it a lot.

 

That seems like a lot. How many miles do you drive in two weeks? I prefer not to let the oil level get belwo 1/4 quart, which means I'm checking at least every other day.

 

i just realized i have the sam problem I put in 5 quarts and only had enough oil to fill 4 quarts i have 29k mils on it. was there a tsb or somthing like that on the car?

 

I'm pretty sure there's been no TSB's on oil consumption. I think it's handled on a case-by-case basis. Personally, I've decided to just drive my car as I normally would without revving the sh**t out of it. I'll wait and see if things improve over time. Otherwise, I might look into getting an '06 Track Z with less than 10 miles. We'll see.