Sometimes when I'm in a hurry to get somewhere I tend get on my car hard, but nothing of pushing it to the max. Today I was running late for work and when I arrived it smelled like straight burning oil. When I was walking back to my car and in the sunlight you can see if you look closely, you can see the oil burning in the air (If I makes sense) Like you can see it more or less. My car is a '96 Trans Am A4. Is it normal for LT-1's at a certain mileage to burn oil? The bird has 155K miles. I did an Oil change the beginning of October and I used Mobile 1 Extended Performance 10W-30. I don't know if the car is old or it's just normal for these cars? (Oil Change has been done on time. I don't race it during the week except race it on the weekends. For the most part it's babied most of the time.)

 

Any engine will, at some point, start burning oil. It's a normal sign of wear, and it won't get better unless you do something about it. The "do something" would normally mean an overhaul.

 

You could do a compression test, then squirt oil in each cylinder through the spark plug hole with a turkey baster and do another compression test, if the second test is higher than the first, it's piston rings. If not, it could be valve seals.

 

What do you mean you could see oil burning in the air? You could have oil dripping onto your exhaust, LT's are notorious for leaking oil from the back of the intake, Look for leaks...

 

This is what I was going to say, if you can visually see oil vapors coming from the car after it's off, you have an oil leak somewhere. If you were burning it bad enough, it would blow it out the exhaust.

 

Yes, I can see the Oil vapor in the air when the car is off. I just didn't know the correct wording for it. The times I would be underneath the car, I see that the whole tranny is all covered in oil and certain parts of the exhaust as well.

 

When I bought the car from the Original owner he told me it had a small oil leak.

 

might be leaking out of the back of the intake manifold?