Too much oil, does it matter

[MrDuke]

A few years ago, a mate decided to check the oil in his Mk3 Cav, and was horrified to discover that the dipstick was totally dry. He then started pouring oil in, out of a 5L can, but still nothing showed up. Having emptied over 4L into the engine, the min-level marker finally disappeared, and he thought he'd run it round the block (quite vigorously) before checking again. A few yards down the road, it suffered epic and violent seal failure.

 

He genuinely didn't think that parking it where the blue Pug is would affect the indicated level at all:

 

 

 

This is the same guy who tried to clean his Beetle engine with copious amounts of WD40 and an oily rag, while it was running, and burnt the car out. And who managed to cover over 100 spirited miles in a Lancia Dedra automatic without realising it was in limp-home mode and was permanently red-lining in 2nd gear without shifting up. Weirdly, he never actually crashed any of his cars - just utterly failed at doing anything with them.

[Bren]

An ex work colleague of mine brought me out to his sierra ( a beautiful 1.8 gl) he wanted to know why it sounded like a skeleton wanking in a biscuit tin.

 

I asked him if he had checked the oil - he told me that there was oil in it, I checked myself - there was a hint of oil at the bottom of the dipstick.

 

The engine was knackered - he could'nt even dip the oil.

[Stroller133]

My mk2 Polo set fire when I overfilled the engine and also starting leaking oil everywhere. Scary!

[Tre3]

I changed the oil in a former colleague's Punto where the sump plug was welded in and refused to be removed, so I had to use a hand-pump to suck the oil oil via the dipstick tube. It took ages and I doubt I got it all out, but we got there in the end. It was easy to refill it via the approved orifice though

 

She rear-ended someone in a big way shortly after and the punto was written off.

Isn't this how you change the oil in a smart car?

[dollywobbler]

Ah. Mrs DW killed her MG Metro because she relied on the oil warning light to tell her the level was low. It was low to be fair, but the engine was destroyed by then (this before I met her). When we did meet, I made the mistake of checking her battered, filthy AX. There was barely any oil on the dipstick. Some people never learn. That poor car got thrashed all over the place, often with barely any oil in it. Flimsy my arse - that AX was unkillable! So we sold it quick, just in case she did find a way to kill it.

 

To be fair, Mrs DW was always much better with checking the oil level in her Mini. Mainly because I showed her how much the thing was pouring over its own subframe. She also became an expert at setting the points gap. 

[rml2345]

Hopefully doing an oil change on mine this week... I'll be doubly sure to check the level!

[MrDuke]

To be fair, the oil warning light on the A and A+ series wasn't so much a 'warning, level is low and needs topping up' as a 'warning, the engine's already f**ked and you need to park up before it seizes solid'.

[xtriple]

I did an oil change on my Sl 500 a couple of times, but the first time I MASSIVELY overfilled it. Couldn't understand why? It needed 8 litres of Mobil1 fully synthetic of a particular spec, which I hunted out and purchased, handily, in 4 litre bottles. So, I drained it all out (measured 8 litres came out) and shoved the two cans in....

 

Checked the dipstick before start up and it was way off the top of the stick! To get it right took a couple of litres back out, started it, checked it, ran it checked it, all correct. It wasn't until I changed the oil again and had to buy more oil that I found that the bottles I'd bought were 5 litres not four... as were the original ones!

 

I really must learn to read....

[Noel Tidybeard]

thank you M. Renner for my oil level gauge