Took my '97 ram 1500 on a trip over Thanksgiving and suddenly came up 3 quarts of oil low. I was very surprised. Used one quart on the trip back. Added another since. It's not smoking, and its not dripping. Any ideas? Really uses it on longer trips.

 

welcome to DF...

most of the time it is related to a leaky plenum gasket. yank off the throttle body and look down into the intake manifold and see if there is any pooling on the bottom. you will need a small mechanics mirror and a flash light so you can check the corners. if you find pooling, the plenum gasket is leaking. a light film is normal, pooling is not.

 

Are you loosing any coolant as well? Do you have prolonged "steam" from your tailpipe well after the engine warms up? Your catalytic converter can burn off smoke.

 

Plenum gasket, i would fix it quickly because when i got my truck the plenum was bad and it was probably like that for a while and it burnt up one of the valves and caused a missfire.

 

plenum is a common problem but he burned about 4 quarts. thats an awful lot of oil for a plenum.

 

I would go with the plenum Gasket... he said he went on a road trip and when mine was shot I would burn a quart\ hr of driving on the highway.