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Too much oil, need to know how bad I've screwed up

lewisac6lewisac6 Member Posts: 1
edited April 2014 in Hyundai

Had someone help me with my car because engine was making a tapping sound, turned out it was lack of oil. Added oil, apparently car burns some oil (1997 Hyundai Elantra, not sure i it actually burns a lot because haven't had the time to figure it out). The engines never smoked or anything though. Am in need of an oil change and made a relatively long trip this weekend, so added some oil. Since my normal oil is black, when I read the dipstick I didn't realize I added way too much. Checked oil to see how much I burned today, and saw I way overfilled, probably by about an inch, not more than an inch and a half. When I was driving today (relatively heavily, ran it from 0-60 as fast as it would go), a friend and I noticed a terrible burning smell that only lasted for a few moments on two separate occasions. After reading about what happens i you overfill, have I likely caused terrible damage? Drove it to work tonight afterwards and absolutely nothing abnormal happened. Barring extensive damage, can I afford to wait until next payday (5 days) to get the oil changed, or do I need to borrow and do it now?

Answers

  • slinger1slinger1 Member Posts: 28

    Hi Lewisac6, this issue was already covered in another post: http://forums.edmunds.com/discussion/3698/honda/x/can-too-much-oil-damage-your-engine
    Bottom line is you if you are handy with a wrench I would drain some of the oil out of the oil pan so you don't have to spend any money until the change. There are pump/hose kits you can buy to suck oil out through the dipstick, but then you might as well spend that money on the oil change. Hope that helps.

  • bpeeblesbpeebles Member Posts: 4,085
    edited April 2014

    Trying to remove the oil-drain-plug to release a 'little' oil is asking for trouble. You would likely end up with a HUGE mess as you try to get the plug back into position as oil drains down your arm.

    No need to drain "from the pan". It is trivial to push a small-diameter hose down the dipstick tube and draw it out with a vacuum-pump. Heck I have performed 100s of oil-changes using the "topside" method. (From under the hood without ever getting under the vehicle.) Of-course, the location of your oil-filter dictates how well topside oil-changes will work on your car.

    With a topside hand-pump oil-sucker - I have also changed xmission-fluids, differential-fluids, snowmobile chain-oil, brake-juice and many other tasks.

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