Engine Oil Overfilling
 

Posting this to get some peace of mind and because I'm too lazy to drain out a bit extra. I change the oil a few days ago, then topped it up a bit too much yesterday. When the engine is cold, the oil reads just past the "H" on the dipstick. I am going to the track this weekend and taking that damned undershroud off is just a huge PITA - guess I could siphon some.

I know overfilling can cause hot spots, foaming, and can kill the engine, or at least sacrifice some power to drive the oil pump. I'm sure if I put in an extra 83 gallons of oil the engine would not like me. I have heard that some people who their car actually put in a bit more oil so the oil pump doesn't run out of oil at high RPM when the oil is distributed around the head more and so they don't get starve. I also know that "hypermilers" generally run less oil for efficiency of the engine. FWIW I do have a 25 row setrab cooler.

Basically, someone just needs to tell me a little extra oil isn't going to kill my car so I have peace of mind. I'm probably the most pessimistic, fretful (and therefore safe :icon17:) driver out there :eekdance:.

You... Are going to die









Your engine... Probably not

Probably not a big deal but it depends on your definition of "just past." If you don't want to remove the tray, just get some small (~1/4") tubing, run it down the dip stick tube, and suck some oil out.

:(

You know you don't have to take the whole under shroud off to drain a little oil right?

It has a crease in it and only 3 or 4 screws holding it in so you can access the oil pan.

I am sure you are fine. That's probably less than .25 of a quart. Nissan or any other manufactures would have alot of blown engines if that cause engine damages.

The VQ will probably burn off the extra oil in a couple of weeks. :p

^^^;)

LOL, in all honesty, if you're saying your engine is COLD, like overnight cold, I bet the 'extra' is from the oil in the lines flowing back to the sump.
You should be more than ok anyways.
IF you're going to do anything about it
Syphoning off oil is a BITCH (trust me I've done it)... It's way easier to undo the rear 4 bolts holding on the undertray then opening the drain plug to let some oil out

True. On a similar note, I'm taking spare coolant to the track and all I have in my house is 50/50 ethylene-glycol (the green stuff). I assume if need be I can mix that with nissan's special blue LLC, it will just reduce the life of the coolant right? Not like mixing orange/green coolant or something

I was told by my local Nissan dealer that the blue is already diluted, ready to use, the green needs to be mixed. I can't see why there would be an issue mixing the two.

The tad bit of extra oil won't cause any issues. Only if you had put in an extra 1-2 courts would you have issues like the engine running rough.

an extra 1/2 qt should be fine.

I believe that 1/8 of an inch above the max fill line on the dipstick is fine. :tup:

Look at your rear view mirrors and if you see smoke coming out of your exhaust then you know you have too much. You did not say how much you used to top it off.

I don't agree. I've siphoned oil out of the Z. It was simple, but slow.

When my wife's lease was overfilled, I said fvck it lol

Is it not easier to remove 4 bolts?

I don't know, I'm paranoid so I would want to make sure everything was in spec if I was going to track it...DDing on the other hand probably wouldn't worry too much. Maybe next oil change put a fumoto valve in place of the drain plug so if it ever happens again it will be very easy to drain off a little bit. For this time I would just go buy a $10 siphon pump from the auto parts store and pull some out before the track.

Not if you had already taken the car off ramp/jack stands like an idiot :ugh: :icon17: I just siphoned it into a makeshift bleeder bottle using a length of tubing and a water bottle.

Also, it makes more of a mess, and the OCD in me would want to replace the copper crush washer after loosening the drain plug :tiphat:

Note, I do not have a valved drain plug, but those are pretty sweet :tup: