Hey Shern,

You’re crazy.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way let’s think about where your oil could be going. My 240D used a quart every thousand miles. It mostly leaked out. But my recollection of your car is that it is sealed up pretty well.

Is your oil filling up your separator at that rate? Does the car have the puff of smoke under hard acceleration?

If you are burning it I’d try a leak down test before pulling the head. I was able to macgyver a leak down tester with some glow plug fittings from my compression tester and my pancake compressor. Get the cylinder up to TDC and start filling the cylinder with air slowly. Hold the crank with a wrench and do NOT let it fly around and hit you in the face (I like a helper to hold the wrench…it takes surprisingly little force to hold the engine from spinning when it’s at TDC but if it gets off TDC the wrench will really fly).

Listen at the oil fill port for a hiss. Listen at your radiator for bubbling. Listen at your intake/exhaust for a hiss. If your head gasket has a problem you may be able to find it this way if your leak is to the oil galley. Shut down your compressor and watch the pressure leak down. This may help you actually diagnose a head gasket failure.

Maybe a bad oil control ring?

I wonder if you can pull your exhaust manifold and see if a runner has more oil in it than another. There must be some way to check for fouling. We have those prechambers that make it hard to inspect the bores.

A head gasket it still a decent amount of work. Try to come up with some diagnostics before getting into that.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles
97 C280 147k miles