Too MUCH engine oil – Now what?

[Randal Duncan]

:sick: I just successfully replaced the rear brakes, calipers, etc, Before taking the car for a test drive I changed the oil for the first time on this car. I misread the Haynes manual for the amount of oil capacity. Instead of 4.1 qts I put in 6.1 qts which seemed like way too much. I drove the car about one mile to check the brakes. I did a Google search to verify the oil amount and discovered my error. I drained the oil pan then put back in the correct amount of oil. When I tried to start the car it sounds sick, turns over –kind of– but won’t start. After 3-4 for short attempts I stopped trying. Now what? Advise? Suggestions? 1999 Passat 1.8 turbo automatic front wheel drive.

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[road2perfection]

[quote=”trek520″ post=58510]:sick: I just successfully replaced the rear brakes, calipers, etc, Before taking the car for a test drive I changed the oil for the first time on this car. I misread the Haynes manual for the amount of oil capacity. Instead of 4.1 qts I put in 6.1 qts which seemed like way too much. I drove the car about one mile to check the brakes. I did a Google search to verify the oil amount and discovered my error. I drained the oil pan then put back in the correct amount of oil. When I tried to start the car it sounds sick, turns over –kind of– but won’t start. After 3-4 for short attempts I stopped trying. Now what? Advise? Suggestions? 1999 Passat 1.8 turbo automatic front wheel drive.[/quote]

That is a lot of oil, however, there should be no damage done to it.
it’s just a value set so the crank won’t splash in it, the issues you might face WHILE driving with too much oil, and these are not after.
The possible issues is:

Oil leaking out due to high oil pressure, and in worst case scenario the dipstick will be shot out and you have a lot of oil to clean up
You may get terrible fuel economy and high exhaust values.

IT should be fine, if it doesnt start there may be a error code on the ECU, a ODB2 scanner can clear this code, I’m unfortunately not too familiar with ODB2 as I mostly use custom ECU setups.

[college man]

Pull the spark plugs. see if they are oil fouled.

[Trent “Teddy” Martin]

If an engine is over filled to a large extent it can cause hydralock where the engine siezes in this case you are lucky my advice is to remove your spark plugs and use a vacuum brake bleeder to suck any oil out of the cylinders 🙂

[John B Kobberstad]

Drain out 2 quarts and let the vehicle sit for a day or 2. I have a 4 stroke Honda outboard motor that I bought for a song. The owner had laying on his garage floor. He thought it was seized up because the pull chord could not be pulled. It was a new motor which had never been used. Brought it home. Set it straight up for storage and let it sit for a couple days (so that the oil that had filled the cylinder could drain itself out of the cylinder so that the piston could move again). Pulled the chord and gee the chord pulled and rotated the engine and the piston moved again and was well lubricated in the cylinder. Moral of story – store outboard motors in upright position and don’t overfill your vehicle with oil. If that oil gets into the cylinder and will not allow the piston to complete its stroke the engine will not turn until that oil goes out of the cylinder. It should drain itself out from just sitting. Not sure if this is what happened in your case, but you could remove plugs and check if there is oil in the cylinders. Hope this is helpful to you.

John

[Konrad]

Your engine takes about 4.5qts to reach the full mark. I have seen plenty of 1.8s overfilled much worse than what you did. If you overfilled it by a lot, you would have seen white smoke billowing out the exhaust under acceleration.

Remove the plugs and crank it. I doubt there is any oil in the cylinders, but it’s worth making sure they are clear. You said your engine doesn’t sound right as it’s cranking. Remove the oil cap so you can see the intake cam. There is a black plastic baffle over the intake cam under the oil fill hole so you will need a flashlight to look at an angle so you can see the rotating assembly inside. Have someone crank it and make sure the cam is spinning. These engines had a tendency to skip time or snap the t-belt at around 60K. It almost always happened on cold start up. Aside from that, i don’t know what else would make your engine sound ‘sick’ as it’s cranking.

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