What oil pan are you running? We used to always run a quart low with stock oil pans on big blocks and Hemis. Because the top quart would ALWAYS disappear. The second quart often would not. I have heard differing opinions as to what was going on. But I have seen many, many times where these engines would lose the top quart of oil when the stock pan was full. And lose it pretty quick, too.
But running a quart low can be dangerous, particularly on a Hemi, so be careful. But it still might be worth a test to see if your major oil consumption is limited to the top quart in the pan or not.
I experienced the same on a 383hp that was still factory build. The top quart always disappeared like clockwork. Fast and no real trace. Always. After a few years I did notice the back of the car had a faint brownish tanish film look. It was VR1 regular oil, not synthetic. Never saw it burn though.
I ran a road race pan on that car so it really wasn’t an issue for starvation.
Oddly I had a 72 440 factory build that smoked a little at high rpm’s guys would notice, but it didn’t use any oil. Ever. Go figure. I didn’t use vr1 back then.
My current car has an unknown history 440, supposed to be 72,000 miles. Haven’t caught it doing anything like that, but has a slight leak. First time I had to add any was this summer and it wasn’t much. It was kinda weird as it was full and then the oil disappeared by the next check. Starting to wonder if vr1 cleans out deposits and the burning begins. This one had synthetic when I got it, but I found it to make the leak worse so I went to the Dino.
