Originally Posted By: Quest
to OP:
-stuck oil control rings, indeed!
-not enough oil return holes in the oil control ring lands, not necessarily.
-lack of maintenance on the oil change part, you bet!
I've done enough of these corollas,etc. to know that even with factory OCI (avg 6kkms OCI only using dealership bulk oil), 1st owner 99 corolla,over 230kkms when changing hands, not a drop of oil burned. PCV was properly serviced by stealerships.
to others: internet is notorious for casual observations and such, and in this case: 98~00 corolla engine oil burning (leads to speculation of engine being hard on oil!?, yadda yadda, yadda) is wayy overrated. It mainly has to do due to owner's lack of oil changes during early years of ownerships. As the mileage creeps up, the damage is pretty much done for (and good luck on you folks trying to do a piston soak to unstuck the otherwise carboned/jammed oil control rings with all kinds of stoddard solvents, etc.)
you can try using high mileage oil or stoddard solvent to help in reducing oil burning rate but at the end: stuck oil control rings can never get freed unless the engine is taken apart and piston oil control ring lands get scraped manually.
Q.
What you said doesn't agree with my experience. I have made in 2002 corolla serviced every 6 months or 4-5000 miles with dealer oil (under warranty) and valvoline or PYB oils myself after warranty expired.
My consumption started at 65,000 miles IIRC. Took several MMO and kreen soaks and HM oil to stop it.
This engine heats pistons too much on hwy driving and dino oil cokes on the pistons. New pistons with more oil holes fixed the design problem in 2003.