New Astra G Coupe owner

chu

Hey, I'm Chu.
Bought my very first car a couple of months ago, and it happens to have a z22se engine. It has run about 80.000 kilometers.
Here it is:

I hope to pick up some info from here. One thing I learned from experience so far is that it seems to sip a lot of 5w-30.

corsaZ22se

Hello and welcome to Z22SE.
That's very low mileage, I would guess the stem seals have gone hard over time and its burning the oil unless you have a leak?
There is two thoughts on what oil to use in these engines, both recommended by Vauxhall, 5w30 fully synthetic and 10w40 semi synthetic. I'm firmly on the 10w40 side. been running Z22SE's for close on 20 years now on it with no problems what so ever. First chain made 117k miles and only got changed due to cracked head from a tuning company checking plugs before mapping and over torquing the plugs :facepalm:

chu

Thank you for your reply. I don't know if it's out of the ordinary. It's my first refill since I bought it and admittedly I didn't check the oil level until now. Assuming it was at max level upon buying it, it drank 1.5 litre in 5000 km. Filled it with 5w-30 fully synthetic because according to the service book the previous owner (yep, only 1 previous owner!) put 5w-30 in it during the cars' lifetime. I was forewarned about regularly changing oil and taking good care of the engine in general, because of it supposedly being a weak spot in terms of reliability.

KevinH

Hi and welcome to the site. 🙂

Vauxhall/Opel list in the Owners Manual that acceptable oil consumption is 1 Litre per 1000 Km (₆₀₀ Miles) so it would appear you are within that but just ensure it doesn't go below the 'Min' mark on the dipstick as these engines (like most) don't like running on a low oil level.
My Vectra B SRi has had the GM fully synthetic 5W30 from new and at 120,000 miles only consumes a small amount of oil. Let the engine warm up fully before accelerating hard.

chu

Hi KevinH. 1 litre per 1000km sounds like a lot to me! Good to know, I'll be monitoring the oil consumption on my engine and see how much it really consumes. All in all I'm very happy with my purchase so far, especially due to the relatively low price of 4700 euro (which I'm sure in the UK 2nd hand market is a lot of money). Apart from the seat heating on the drivers' side and the display starting to lose pixels and me not knowing how to change language on it, it appears everything else is in great condition. Bought myself some nice looking floor mats too.