I recently purchased a 2003 FX45 used from a friend of the family. I love the car. I wish it had a little bit more power but my last vehicle was a Kawasaki ZX-1100 so I think I will always feel that way. (Does anyone know when they will offer CAI for the 45?)

My problem is the last few oil changes have shown that I am consuming 1-1.5 quarts of oil every 3500 miles. To me that sounds excessive...

My question: What is the maximum standard oil consumption for the 4.5 liter engine as defined by Infiniti?

thats considered acceptable....

Its unfortunate the way the new V8 consumes oil, the old V8 never did!!

Most automobile manufacturers consider oil consumption greater than 1 quart per 1,000 miles to be a problem [potential fouling of cats].

Remember the warranty requires owners to keep the oil at full regardless of consumption until Nissan agrees that it is excessive and agrees to replace the engine.

Reducing ring friction to decrease frictional losses enabled some of the 278>340 HP from the same displacement..............what owners wanted more power they just didn't expect the downsides. That a % of engines would be smokers.

Just went through this same scenario. Took me 8 months of going back and forth to the dealer to do oil consumption test, a letter to Infiniti USA and another oil consumption test. Well I'm scheduled to have the engine replaced. A little scary, but the oil consumption could have caused even more problems in the future.

It is not considered normal for the engine to be using 1 quart every 1000 miles. Infiniti did say that it is normal on every 3000 miles. This is coming from corporate. I heard that 1 quart every 1000 from my dealer too and its completely wrong.

I work as a Infiniti Tech and have down many short blocks and long blocks. I have yet to see a replacemnet factory engine not burn oil!!! its the nature of the Beast...

I have same issue with my 2003 FX. Since 34k miles, I had issues where the car is very low on oil before the 3k change interval.

On numerous occassions after not driving it, its started with lots of smoke. Closer inspection reveals there's only a quart of oil in it. The dealer is the only service provider who touches the car so they had me start an oil consumption test. 20k miles later nothing has changed because it's only failed 3 times. Apparently, it needs to fail their oil consumption test 4x consecutively. I really want to get this resolved; we don't drive the car much anymore so takes a long while to put 1k on it. It has 55k miles on it now and I just had the issue again (I took it in for an oil change at Frontier Infiniti and it was found to only have 1qt of oil).

Start having the dealership do oil consumption tests now so you can build up your documentation. In my M45 (same engine) it started with half a quart per 3k miles, then went to 1, then 1.5 and ended up being around 3.5 per 3k miles. I also started to get bad knocking noises occasionally from the engine.

At that point Infiniti finally replaced the engine. This all happened over about 15k miles, so make sure you get your documentation in place and find a dealer that is helpful. Hopefully you don't end up needing a new engine like I did.