Rings wear/high oil consumption with MT?

Hi,

Can't think of a better place to ask this: has anyone experienced excessive ring wear on their TSX over the years (mine's 2004 manual)? I do drive it relatively hard, and eventually in the past year or so it started to consume oil at a rate where it needs to be topped off every 3000 miles or so. Eventually (last week) I had to take it in because the engine light was on; it ended up with just about 1 qt of oil left in there, which is of course insanely low. Had to replace the chain/tensioner/actuator because it has run long enough with low oil that the chain stretched too much fro the heat.

When I asked "what is wrong with it", the dealer said the rings are worn, and that's why it burns more oil than usual. He suggested I might have bad MT driving habits, and that there's a lot of engine load likely due to excessive engine braking. I, naturally, don't think my habits are all that terrible (hmm... aranoid: ), although like I said I do drive it somewhat hard/fast. But really the only thing that I can think of, for which incorrect engine braking would be bad, would be the clutch wear, no? But the clutch is fine...

The dealer did say that it should be OK -- as long as I top it off every 3000 miles or so (I'm planning on 2500, half-way between the changes), and continue with the 5000-mile oil change/service schedule, which BTW I had followed religiously since the day I bought it, back in Jan '04.

It's got 166,000 miles on it now.

Another reason I'm doubting that the driving habits are an issue here, is that one of my friends has '97 Accord (manual) and he's driving it like crazy; he's basically waiting for it to die before he has to buy a new one. So he takes off fast with cold engine, downshifts all the way to 1st gear without much synchronization, etc. I don't do anything like that.

Anyway, just wanted to throw this out there, see if anyone had any similar experiences, or just some words of wisdom re. the subject matter. Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks!