Oil consumption and ticking noise.....

S

sorka

Member
Name
Alan
On Monday, I bought a 2012 FX50S with 26K miles on it. For all intents and purposes it pretty much looks and feels like a new car.

I drove it home 750 miles and checked the oil. It was down a quart. I figured they must have under filled it because I didn't check it when I left. I filled it back up to full. However, it's now been 260 miles (more stop and go driving) and it's now down another 1/2 quart. That's about 80% highway and 20% stop and go. I suspect 100 miles of stop and go would be enough to kill a quart. No other obvious signs of burning oil. No blue smoke at startup or when getting on it. I've been using auto mode only and no manual mode or engine braking.

The other worry is that there is a tick coming from the drivers side of the engine that comes and goes. Actually it sounds exactly like the VTC variable valve timing springs on the 300ZX Twin Turbos when they went bad, but it could also be a connecting rod or valve lifter.

Do others have a ticking sound on that side? Could this be normal? Obviously the oil consumption isn't. This is surprising as the FX45 had a rep for burning oil but the FX50 hasn't had any reports at all that I can find about oil consumption.

Other than that, the car drives like a bat out of hell. I test drove multiple FX50's and this one feels faster than all the rest, so whatever is going on isn't effecting power delivery at this point.
 
Do you only hear the tick sound when accelerating? It could be multiple things, such as a decompress lifter. Try adding an oil additive and see if the noise goes away. Since you just bought the vehicle and it is under warranty why not take it to the dealer and have them look into it. You said you test drove multiple FX50's and this one felt faster than all the rest? I am assuming all the FX50s you test drove had pretty low mileage, unless the FX50 you bought had any modifications or tune done to it. They should all feel the same acceleration wise.
 
Haven't heard of any other 50s with an oil problem. That is heavy oil use, take it to the Dealers ASAP, it is under warranty.
No abnormal ticking with my FX50.
 
Yea. I'll take it to the dealer in the next few days. I just wanted to make sure that everyone ins't responding with "that's normal" first but I figured that would be the case. I don't think an oil additive is warranted. The car is very new, very low miles, and has had oil changes every 3750 miles or so according to the dealer service history printout(which matches the car fax as well).

So unless they did something stupid like use 0-20, I'm pretty sure I drew short straw on this. Even though it's under warranty, I'll have to fight tooth and nail for probably a year with repeated sealed dipstick oil monitoring to get anything done. Especially sucky given that i live 100 miles from the nearest dealer.
 
Burning that much is certainly not normal in any new vehicle.

1/2 a quart in less than 500 miles is shocking.

As Gee said take it in and have them find out whats going on under warranty, and if they try to tell you its normal, or that they don't know take it to a different dealer.

Get this resolved as soon as possible cause not doing so could have serious future implications.
 
Exotich said:
Do you only hear the tick sound when accelerating? It could be multiple things, such as a decompress lifter. Try adding an oil additive and see if the noise goes away. Since you just bought the vehicle and it is under warranty why not take it to the dealer and have them look into it. You said you test drove multiple FX50's and this one felt faster than all the rest? I am assuming all the FX50s you test drove had pretty low mileage, unless the FX50 you bought had any modifications or tune done to it. They should all feel the same acceleration wise.
Click to expand...

I can hear the tick on the left side with the window rolled down during idle and light acceleration. This was the lowest mileage and newest FX50 I drove. There have certainly been moments when I've wonder if it's really stock.

But it must be. It was owned previously by a middle aged doctor and I seriously doubt he was into modding.
 
Further characterization. The tick never occurs when the engine is cold. It needs to get up to operating temperature. I removed the shroud and engine cover to try and zero in on it better. I was hoping it would be the pcv valve but it I think if it were it would stop when the vacuum increases under acceleration which it doesn't. Still the sound is right there at the top under the valve cover.

But now for the exciting news. I changed the oil friday night with my favorite wal-mart 10w30 oil. The same oil I've used in our SC400 for the last 330K miles and our Prius for the last 175K miles. I drove it 500 miles over the weekend. Not a single drop of use as far as I can tell. The oil level is staying exactly where I left it when I changed it.

I'll post more when I get the analysis of the drained oil back from Blackstone Labs. My suspicion is they either used 5w20 or added some cleaning additive.
 
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