When should an engine overhaul be done for a car? I have 128,500 miles on the car. I have to translate all my engine knowledge from my work as an aircraft mechanic so ...if my car was an airplane... I would have overhauled it at least once by now. With cars, do you just go on the engine til it has a major problem or do you want to catch it before a major failure ?

If it uses alot of oil , you'll get alot of different answers, say 1 qt.ever 500 to 1000 miles or when you accelerate from a light and can't see the car behind you, or it gets to the point you can't afford to put gas in it because you spent it on oil!!! You might want to have it checked.Cars are alot different than aircraft. I had a 89 Maxima with 230,000 miles and never cracked the engine open. If it's got good performance and is good on oil, about 1gt. between changes, your okay. I've worked on Nissan's with over 300,000 miles and running good.

My take on it.

You need a rebuild if any one of the conditions below applies.

a) Uses more than a quart of oil every 500 milesb) Spits out noticable blue clouds even during light acceleration.c) You experince significant performance loss, due to lack of compression

This are teh minimum standards most people will use, generally rebuilds are not something ppl budget for so they get postponed until it's pretty bad.

Fred...

cool. ok. That info is of help. I don't have any of the above problems because I do routine maintenance on the car and fix things before they go out. I thought I might start planning to save on a overhaul or an engine swap in the next 2 years or so. I run the car hard and it won't be before too long where I might be facing a major engine job. At least now I have an idea what things to keep an eye out for.