Oil Consumption, No Smoke - Rings? Thoughts?

[BBSpeed26]

Hey folks, looking for some troubleshooting help from the crowd, or at least some guidance on what my next steps should be.

I have an '11 Speed 3 with a totally stock drivetrain (mods to date: horn upgrade, rear motor mount), I'm the only owner with ~93k miles on the clock. I've been doing my own oil & filter changes from the get-go, twice a year or every 5k miles, and the car has spent most of its life on Pennzoil Ultra Full Synth 5W30.

Lately, it's started drinking oil at a fairly alarming rate, I'd guess to the tune of a quart every 1-2k miles. Took it to a local shop, local shop said the PCV valve is just fine, which they think would point to possible turbo problems or piston rings going, but they weren't familiar enough with the platform or engine to want to do the work, so they referred me back to a dealer.

My added thought from reading around a bit is that if it's the turbo, I'd see smoke at idle, and I've never seen so much as a whiff.

So, that would point to... piston rings? Is this a logical conclusion? Is there anything else you guys can think of that it could be? Any tests that could inform the next steps and/or other issues I'm maybe not considering?

Regardless, kind of wondering what my options are. Do I take it to a dealer and just ask them to diagnose and/or replace rings? If so, has anyone done that and had any luck? Any idea of $$ involved?

I'd love to keep this thing on the road for another few years (just paid off 2 years ago), but if it's going to take a new engine or something to make that happen... I'm not sure that's in the budget. Just trying to figure out what my next steps could or should be, and if I have to go to dealerland, at least go in with some info!

Many thanks to anyone who can help me on this - just trying to get some opinions and education before I make my next move.

[CleverOne]

Need to do a compression test and leak down before anyone can really tell you whats going on.

[BBSpeed26]

Gotcha. Thanks! Is that an... "any shop should be able to do that" thing, or a "need to go to a dealer" thing? Googling around it looks like *I* could do it with a few tools, which makes me think most places should be able to do it, but, also sort of wondering why my shop didn't just do it if that's the case...

Vaguely related, but if anyone knows of any shops that know their Mazdaspeeds in southwest PA, I'm all ears. Otherwise I think Rohrich is the only dealer that does Mazdaspeed work...

[Polish_Eagle]

Definitely do a leak down test. My 2011 speed 3 was burning a fare amount of oil and when I did a compression test all cylinders were ~180 PSI. However, when I did a leak down test each cylinder was leaking about 30%, and that's horrendous. Once I tore the engine apart each piston had cracked ringlands.

As for repair options, if the engine is toast, you'll need to either rebuild it or buy another one.

[mazda62006]

Do what other have said. It could be your oil control rings are clogged up. If it is only burning a quart every 1-2k i would just drive and keep an eye on the oil. This is assuming you are not having other issues. Not worth a rebuild at this point in my opinion.