My sister’s 2010 GS350 drinks an incredible amount of oil. Like a quart every two or three weeks. We’ll have it diagnosed, but are planning on a motor swap to fix it. The car is in otherwise excellent condition.

I hear the 2011+ are the motors with revised internals to fix the oil consumption. Question is, will any 2GR-GSE do the trick, say if we got one from a 2011-13 IS350? Or better yet, any Lexus 3.5 from any model up until the FKS revision?

Or are we stuck with the same gen motor and hoping it doesn’t burn oil like the old one?

 

Before you go swapping engines dumping thousands into it, try to fix it with chemicals. The issue with oil consumption is the delay in oil changes, these cars do not like 5000+ mile oil changes. Gunk gets built up inside and locks the oil control rings. Have you taken the car to see if there are maybe a leaking valve cover or a leaking front timing cover? As these are common leak points in these cars.

If there are no major leaks, then more likely its internally. What you can do is buy commercial grade cleaning solutions from a company called BG, you will want the MOA and EPR. You can find it on amazon or ebay.

With the engine warm, pour in the cleaner and follow the directions. I would also go a step further and remove all the spark plugs, and buy a can of BG air intake cleaner and directly pour that into each cylinder hole. Allow that to soak in over night, then with the plugs out lay a towel over each side of the engine and crank over the engine to remove all the fluids. Then put the plugs back in and change the oil, and add the addictive.

Also if you notice as you pour the cleaner into the sparkplug hole and the fluid level drops quickly then know that cylinder is giving you the oil issues. I would try this before doing an engine swap, and leave the oil changes to 3,000 miles from now on

 

Yeah, so here’s the thing… Sister’s been getting fleeced by her oil change shop and they’ve been doing full synthetic changes every 3k miles. We tried the internal cleaner tricks and it made no difference at all.

Like I said, it will be inspected before a swap, but I doubt it’s a leak. If it were that bad it would show up on her garage floor and she’d be throwing a fit.

 

Sorry for not providing you with the answer you're looking for but how many miles are on the car for it to be burning that much oil?!

I have a 2009 GS350 with about 124k miles that goes through one quart in between oil changes (every 5k miles)

 

She’s at about 150k miles. Runs really well otherwise.

 

I would atleast try the chemicals through the spark plug method.

Remove the plugs, pour in a good amount of high quality cleaner (seafoam/BG/marvel mystery oil), loosely hand tighten the plugs and let it sit over night. The next day remove the plugs, place towels over the spark plug holes, and crank the engine without the plugs. Some have had success with this method. All it would cost is the fluids, its worth a shot imo

Kinda like this method, just dont crank the engine with the spark plugs installed and fluid in the chambers.

 

As for a replacement engine, there is a junkyard search. Once you search the model and year the search engine automatically shows you what year 350 engines are compatible with your car and the junkyards near by and there prices.

www.car-parts.com