A strange oil problem

89GTVert · 04-29-2006

ok, this is just going to be a description of a problem that I used to have with my 5.0. Im hoping that some of you have had some experience with this but I doubt that many have.

Until about 3 months ago I had to warm up my engine for about 3-4 minutes at least when it was cold (until I could see the temp guage rising). If I didnt warm the car up for long enough I would get about zero performance from the engine, it would die pretty much as soon as I started releasing the clutch in 1st. Also, I noticed that when this happened my oil level would drop to almost nothing in an extremely short period of time.
The wierd part was that I never saw any unusual smoke from my exhaust when this happened, and I would expect to see lots of blue smoke if it was burning oil in those quantities. As long as I let the car warm up adequately, it wouldnt hardly burn a drop of oil and it ran strong. The first thought that I had was that the rings were "sticky" and were not seating right until the car warmed up enough, but this doesnt really explain the lack of smoke. Of all of the mechanics and car people that I have talked to, no one could ever give a good answer as to what it might be.
I had this problem for as long as I can remember and I have had the car for about 3 years.
Then one day I decided to try it again without warming it up, just to possibly rule something else out, and it drove perfectly. That was a few months ago and it has been perfectly fine ever since then.

If anyone has experienced something like this before and/or who has any insight as to what causes it, I would love to hear from you.

GhostDog 5.0 · 05-03-2006

Pull the codes, change the plugs, inspect the cap and rotor, replace the wires and clean your MAF.

Your car should have more power due to it running rich when you first turn it on.

Instead of just letting it warm up and get out of closed loop you should try to fix the problem.

89GTVert · 05-03-2006

Yea, I did all those things a few times over. This was something more significant than that. And like I said, the problem fixed itself eventually.
It was just weird and I dont know if anyone else has noticed it.