Condition is.

Just started losing about 1 quart of oil every 300 mile of highway while towing.

Now the oil is getting thin and smells a little like gas.

No signs of oil leakage.

Oil light comes on at idle (possibly because of gas in the oil, thin oil) even if the oil level is above the low mark on the dip stick.

Dealer service rep suggested possibly burnt (stuck?) rings. He suggested engine rebuild.

Questions.

1) Could it be something other than the rings?

2) If the rings are bad, is an engine rebuild the best option? What are the other options?

3) If i keep driving it in the current condition, but keep the oil level, will it be ok?

Any other insight welcome.

 

If you don't have any obvious signs of oil leaking and you are using that much oil, then the dealer is probably right, although it may not necessarily be the rings that are causing the excessive oil consumption. Are you getting blue smoke out the tail pipe? Are the plugs fouled, oily? What did a compression test tell you, if the dealer or you did one? IF the oil burning started rapidly, then there might be some other cause I'd look for, first... Can't point you in any direction, because you have to start with the compression test and some basic info like the plug condition, etc... Give us more info.

 

Like SpikeStrip said do compression test first and let us look at the result.
You have said that it started while towing.. did it overheated?
How many miles on the truck?

 

It has 133k on it now. It did not overheat. The only previous problem was that I was getting a TPS error, so i replaced the TPS. During one of the TPS error occurences it did stall while in traffic on the interstate, i shifted to neutral and then restarted at low speed without stopping. I know the TPS shouldn't have anything to do with it, but this occured just prior to the oil problem occuring.

I'm in the process of trying to check the compression.

I'm really to the point of just saying ˟˟˟e it and replace the motor. It just pisses me off to have a toyota and motor failure at this mileage. I allow the dealer to take care the damn thing as they see fit ($$) and have only missed a few oil changes by a 1 or 2k miles.

 

A qt of oil per 300 miles or so is a lot of oil to go out the tail pipe. It's going to be very obvious by sight (blue smoke), or smell (you'll smell oil in the exhaust). If you don't have those symptoms, and you're not sure about making a diagnosis yourself, take the truck to an independent for another look see. A motor rebuild/replacement is veeeeerrrry expensive, so I'd invest 50 bux to have someone else look at it... You might only need a head replacement, or valve job.

As far as running the motor with an oil burning issue, it won't make much difference, if you keep it topped off, and the oil pressure is OK ...

Good luck.