04 350 I have had it about a month. I had to add a quart of oil today. Initially the car had a valve cover gasket leak. I got it fixed and topped off oil. Now I am adding and not seeing any on the ground, but I can smell oil at times when driving. Is this common? Starting to look for another engine?

 

Well, critical factor omitted.... Mileage on this engine?

No one can do any type of diagnostic from behind a keyboard without at least some data. Have you done any of the typical testing? Leakdown, compression, exhaust coloration, bore scope, etc?

 

As Mic said, more data is required.

At WOT, I sometimes get a funky smell from my Z. I assume some oil or blow by is getting burned under these conditions, that... or it's just my CATs getting hotter than usual. In my case, oil consumption is the "normal" amount for a healthy VQ35DE (between 0.5 - 0.75qt per 3500mi change intervals). All engines consume a little oil between changes, some more than others. If you're on top of maintenance, this should not be a serious problem. An extreme example of a burner was my old Revup VQ, it would easily chug 1qt of oil per 1k miles and required close monitoring. At least oil is cheap, engines are not! That engine ran great for years even with the oil consumption issue, it was just thirsty. Good compression, good power, no issues aside from consumption. I assume it was impacted by the well known mfg. defect for RevUps, sadly I was way outside my Warranty coverage by the time the serious burning developed.
Cheers!
-Icer