The FB25 engines, especially
The FB25 engines, especially made before May 2013 (as indicated in Subaru TSB documents), are known to burn oil, with some of them burning several QTs between changes. TSB: 02-143-13R
Moreover, they have lowered the OCI and are actively swapping out the oil level sensors and reprogramming the ECU to trigger the low oil warning light so that it turns on with LESS oil in the engine. This is being done on cars that are burning lower amount of oil (anything under 1/3 QT per 1200 miles).
Then there is another issue at play for cars that are deamed to be burning oil and need to be diagnosed:
The biggest issue at the moment is that Subaru’s dealers dont get paid full rate for the engine work. They also dont get allocated enough hours that make sure doing the short block is really cost effective for them. In addition, the dealer has to repair any issues resulting with replacement of the short blocks, which seems to be frequent. As such, many dealers are resorting to adding too much oil to the engine during the oil consumption tests (which are performed as per the “FB Engine Oil Control Ring TSB Oil Consumption Test” document). They are appear to be doing this to prevent having to replace the engines on vehicles that only burn oil at a rate of two QTs every 7200 miles, which is the replacement threshold.