saint francis

Hi, apologies if this is not relevant for you but I thought I'd mention I had the same problem with oil contaminating the air filter and causing emissions problems. Turned out not to be piston rings but instead, simply way too much oil in the engine. Basically it recently had an oil change before I bought it and it was significantly overfilled which caused the problem. I let out some oil to the normal level, changed the air filter and solved the problem.

Thanks. I didn't drop the sump, clean the magnet or change the filter. I thought that might be too big a project for me, just having ramps on my driveway, but perhaps that's the way forward. Probably hasn't been done for the 25 years of the car's life. I did wonder if this is just how the gearbox behaves. It isn't really a problem when driving, gets me to where I need to go, but I'm feeling that it's such a solid car that the gearbox is the only thing that could potentially let it down.

Hi there, newbie here. I have recently acquired a 1998 Lupo, 1.4 automatic. It's a great car, VERY solid underneath considering its age (I wonder if it has been garaged). Also only 45k miles. The engine runs great but I've noticed when driving that the car seems to shift very early out of 3rd gear into 4th, as if it wants to skip the gear. Especially noticeable when driving gently rather than when I put my foot down. Hardly wants to stay in 3rd at all. I did a quick ATF change for the hell of it which made no difference, I wasn't really expecting it to. Does this sound like the start of a terminal gearbox problem or is this just the way these gearboxes behave, perhaps for fuel economy reasons? Thanks for any comments.