Hi Marj,

Sorry mate, I told you I would come back soon on this one & then I did not.......I've been out of sorts, my apologies.

I discussed this at length with my friend, the guru mechanic. We came up with a couple of theories on Myrtle, but like anything, its really hard to make a diagnosis via the forum. We were thinking you might like to conduct a little test on Myrtle, which simply involves you driving down a hill & having a friend follow in another vehicle. If you could find a series of hills & do the test in succession, that would be good. If you can drive down the hill in a gear (whatever gear) but basically go down the hill (COAST DOWN THE HILL) without accelerating (longer hill would be best) & then when you get to the bottom of the hill step on the gas & accelerate firmly as you start to go up the other side (at this moment, we are looking for a puff of smoke from Myrtle's exhaust). I understand it has already been discussed that Myrtle isnt blowing smoke continuously.

What we are wondering is if oil is going back up the valve stems & this little test might help confirm that or not. Theres no point doing it without someone following because there may not be alot of smoke emitted at the time. DON'T FORGET TO DRIVE SAFELY, No one wheeled stunts, its basically just driving that you might do every day with someone following behind looking for smoke at that one critical moment. Without the hill, this process of burning oil could continue to happen just when slowing for intersections and accelerating away (even on the flat) but perhaps the tell tail traces of smoke are very slight.

Also, he had a friend with a similar problem in an old vehicle & before they spent any real money, they did an oil change and used Penrite HPR 30 oil (its a thicker oil & good quality one) & low and behold it fixed the friends problem, or for a better word, reduced oil consumption considerably. It may be worth the while to experiment with a few different oils, even if you end up with a more expensive oil where your tops ups are a less in quantity, if you know what I mean

I am a bit of a fan of Penrite oils myself, there is HPR oils for both petrol and diesel vehicles, naturally you would be shopping for the petrol type.

Sorry I cant float past the forum too much at the moment, I'm homeless & without internet facilities STILL !!!!! Missing all the good people here.