Well, after about a month or so of driving, I have noticed that the new Cobra uses a little oil. Maybe almost a quart for about 1000 miles. Hard miles that is... like lots of 5000-6000 revving and taking off fast etc. It doesn't smoke any, but it gets low from time to time and causes the "low oil" light to come on. It doesnt leak oil, so its gotta be going out of the exhaust. I have a friend who is a Cobra enthusiast, he's had a few, and says its normal for them to use a little when you run them hard. He said they low tension rings in them. It runs fine and like I said it doesn't smoke, so its not like Im gonna pull the engine and rebuild it, but I did think about running 10W-30 Mobile 1 instead of 5W-30 Mobile 1. What do you guys think?

 

How many miles on the Cobra? ....What does the oil look like? Clean, dirty(real black)?

 

I wouldn't say the oil is dirty. As in its not black... just dark brown (but Mobil 1 is pretty dark even when you pour it out of the bottle). The car has 91,000 miles on it now, and I know the original owner used to road race it quite a bit. I am the 3rd owner, and since the 2nd owner was in his 60s and only owned the car for a year, I don't think he ran it hard enough to know. He had bought it for his wife, who was diagnosed with Cancer 6 weeks later, so the car was never used. They sold it to me to help pay doctor bills.

The car runs great, it could probably use a tune up with new plugs and wires, but all in all the car has been taken care of exceptionally well considering what its been through. I figure here soon I'll buy a tune up kit off of Ebay with new MSD coils, wires, and NGK plugs. Seems like a good deal for less than $300 shipped.

But, back on subject, is this normal for a car that has been run hard for most of its life?

 

Well 10w-30 and 5w-30 are the same thing when the engine is warm. Maybe try a high mileage oil and change the pcv out.

 

Yeah, thats true... didn't think about the PCV. I will change that and see if it does anything. On a side note I took it on a road trip yesterday through the mountains and was able to pull off a solid 26 MPG! Of course I was driving it easy, but thats amazing! It doesn't really matte, I didn't buy the car for fuel mileage, but its cool to have a car that is this much fun that can still pull off good mileage numbers!