5.3 Oil Consumption!!

[RiverRat12]

Recently bought an 08 Z71 with the 5.3, and of course it is burning a ton of oil!! About 2 quarts every 3K miles to be exact. The vehicle has about 90K miles on it currently.

Is it worth it to deactivate the AFM at this point or is this motor too far gone on its way to burning up the piston rings, etc. Do I have any other options here or should I be looking to get rid of this thing already??

I was a member over on GMFullsize for a while, and even though i heard so much bad news about the AFM system I still upgraded to a tahoe because every thing else about it rocks.

Just wondering if I am driving a ticking time bomb at this point, and if I have any options to stop it. I would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks everyone!

 

[sumo]

No dot get rid of it. You can do oil changes sooner or keep an eye on the oil level. There is a bulletin out there that Chevy de carbonized the top and install a shield around the afm to help prevent oil from burining up. Not sure if you can still get it covered under a warranty.
The next best thing you can do is get a tune from black bear and have them disable the afm. I plan on doing this as I'm supercharging and also my truck vibrates when it's in 4 cyl mode.

It's not just us. I think anything that has cylinder deactivation is a bad design. Honda has something similar in their V6 that also burns oil and fouls spark plugs. Their repair is a do a rering on Pistons 1-4

 

[07Burb]

I had the same problem. Had blackbear tune the AFM out of it when they did the tune and haven't had an issue with oil consumption since and I'm now over 170k and going strong

 

[sumo]

So how much mpg did you loose? Lol like we bought these trucks for gas efficiency

 

[07Burb]

So how much mpg did you loose? Lol like we bought these trucks for gas efficiency

Lol! My mpg stayed the exact same. I think the AFM on the latest gen of GM full size vehicles is better but the previous versions sucked and were worthless "technology" IMO

 

[sumo]

Yea let make it go into 4cyc going down hill yeaaaaaa that will save a bunch of gas

 

[RiverRat12]

I was definitely planning to go the blackbear route once he has a meet close by. I will probably just add oil every month or a little sooner.

My main question is that if I disable AFM, the problem should not continue to get worse right??

 

[Erik G]

If you are mainly a city driver (like me) you will see a MPG change. 1-2MPG city. I am getting 12.5MPG average. I sit at lights and trains and traffic a lot, hardley ever on the freeway. You will not notice at all on the freeway, I did a 75MPH 200 mile trip and averaged 21mpg

2011 5.3 SWB Yukon, Tune and AFM Disabled, Black Widow Muffler, AirAid MIT. Fresh sparkplugs, oil change, all that

 

[Polaris425]

Which tuners will disable the AFM? Bullydog obviously was mentioned above. Who is blackbear?

 

[Erik G]

Black bear is a custom tuner

Superchips is what I used - I already had it from my Sierra