5VZ burning lots of oil

Recently bought the 4runner (has 200k miles) knowing it burns oil and am wondering if it could be anything besides the rings. I’m sure it doesn’t leak any oil anywhere. There is white smoke visible after startup but usually goes away within a minute, I see the most smoke after starting it following a long drive prior to turning it off. I know it doesn’t lose any coolant and the coolant isn’t discolored so I don’t think it’s a head gasket thing. The worst burning I’ve encountered is losing up to 1 quart of oil for about a 2 hour drive on the highway

 

It could leak out the valve stem seals. Theoretically it could leak from the head gasket too, but that is unheard of in basically any engine.

If it's burning oil it's also losing compression. What you can do to narrow it down to the rings is put a little oil in the cylinder before doing a compression test, if that improves compression drastically over a dry compression test you know the rings are bad. If not, then it's probably the valve seals. The rings responsible for compression aren't what holds the oil back (oil rings do that), but if one is worn the other one often is too.

Check the spark plug too, if it's black you are burning oil, the exhaust will also smell too. White smoke is usually coolant, oil will be blue. If you let it keep burning oil, you'll also kill the converter too.

That's an incredible amount of oil loss, that is beyond what I'd want even a 2 stroke to burn.

 

God damn 1 qt for 2 hours?

Previous owner got you with no lube on this one.

This isn't something you are going to fix over the interweb.

 

Yup, compression test time! Do it dry and wet and check the numbers. Also plugs will tell you a lot as mentioned.

I'm half surprised you don't have a misfire code with that much oil consumption.

 

I just checked the plugs and it doesn't look awesome, I can definitely smell the Burt oil, and there's oil on the threads. I'm going to compression test soon to see how bad it is.

 

I wonder what you'll find. Is it one cylinder or across them all? If all the cylinders are bad, I'd love to know how many oil changes were missed in the old girl's life.