02 VW Golf 1.4 Petrol - Burning Oil

Its my daughters car.......... 02 VW Golf 1.4 Petrol ...100,000 miles

Started with an engine seal leaking oil . This was fixed by mechanic.

Now car is still using A LOT of oil and mechanic tells us it is burning A LOT of oil ..

Does anyone here know of problems with this Make & Model.

She has the car since 2006 , is the any guarantee with engine from main dealer garage where car was purchased ?

Mechanic says that he needs to fit new pistons etc to fix this problem , which is a very expensive job .!

It sounds like the original oil leak could have been the source of the problem, if the engine was run with low levels of oil.

As for a warranty on 6 (nearly 7) year old car, all you can do is ask. What do you think the answer will be?

It's a common problem on 1.4 Golfs. I think your mechanic is probably right. A top end rebuild is needed.

concur, they do burn oil,, hardly worth spending euros on an engine in this climate and car prices

Yes they all burn oil, learn to live with it and dont waste money trying to fix it.

I bought a 04 VW Bora (same engine) about 6 months ago and have noticed the same thing. the car is still under warranty and I brought it back to the VW garage after the light came on 3 times over 2000 miles. The mechanic said that its written in the manual that the engine can burn up to 1l of oil every 1000 miles.. but its only common in VW engines with milage over 100k miles. The mechanic added some lubricant mixture to the oil and havent had a problem since. Since then one of my friends told me about their 99 1.4 golf with 150k miles and they put 1l of oil in every 1000 miles or so. Once you watch the oil carefully there isnt a problem it seems and doesnt cost as much as rebuilding the engine.

We have followed your advice and keep topping up this Golf with semi-synthetic oil.

Can anyone out there answer this :

How many miles is it safe to drive when the oil warning light comes on ?

allthedoyles said:

We have followed your advice and keep topping up this Golf with semi-synthetic oil.

Can anyone out there answer this :

How many miles is it safe to drive when the oil warning light comes on ?

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None. Top it up immediately.

allthedoyles said:

We have followed your advice and keep topping up this Golf with semi-synthetic oil...

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I don't think this is the correct oil - I believe it should be to VW specification 504.00 / 507.00 which demands a fully synthetic 5W-30 oil amongst other things (2002 1.4 16V 55kW engine?).

We were using synthetic oil until this problem with burning oil.........and now our Polish mechanic has suggested we change to semi-synthetic oil .

Yes it is a 2002 VW Golf petrol 16V