98 V70xc - Accidentally put in 10 quarts of oil and drove

[abscate]

What gets damaged on the pistons when there is a hydraulic lock?

Pistons are great for compressing air/gas/exhaust but not fluid. Usually the rings blow off, the connecting rods bend, or the gasket blows from the relatively imcompressble fluid (oil) trying to be squeezed in the cylinder

This was actually quite common in VW land where the oil capacity is listed as 5 pints...and many people thought this was 5 quarts!

[RussB]

The overheating has me confused. It should have smoked like crazy and blew oil out of every seal, but not overheat.

[Ozark Lee]

From the description I don't know that we know for sure that anything is wrong at all other than the car was really mad about it. It may or may not be damaged.

The last step that the OP made was to drain the oil and it had been drained for two days.

If it were me I would proceed by refilling the oil to the proper level and then I would remove all of the spark plugs and and crank it over for a minute or so. If there are residual oil pools in on top of the pistons it should blow it out the spark plug holes and it could be quite messy.

After that, replace the spark plugs and try to start the car. Either it will run or it won't but nothing will be further damaged by trying. Chances are it will smoke like crazy when it starts but that by itself doesn't mean anything other than that there is a bunch of oil in the cylinders and it will burn off.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

...Lee

[matthew1]

what is trolling?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

The overheating has me confused. It should have smoked like crazy and blew oil out of every seal, but not overheat.

Good point. Maybe engines overheat when they bend rods and try to push bent metal around the crank?

[matthew1]

Either it will run or it won't but noting will be further damaged by trying. Chances are it will smoke like crazy when it starts but that by itself doesn't mean anything other that there is a bunch of oil in the cylinders and it will burn off.

Yes, this.

(Reminds me - yesterday my dad's $10 "TracPhone" wouldn't take calls, or wouldn't ring, rather. He wants me to help him get a new phone. He's extremely bad at anything technical, very afraid to break electronics. I told him to hunt around the menus and try to turn the ringer back on. I asked him "how much worse can you make it?")

[j-dawg]

If I had to put a new theory in with the many already proposed: high oil level led to pistons whipping the oil, which led to foaming of the oil, which led to oil starvation on critical bearings. Damage to bearings and/or other elements of the rotating assembly causes the present knocking sound.

All of these theories are horrible, but it's probably best to oil the engine up and give it another go. Maybe it's none of this. Maybe you just have an intake leak from when you put the PCV system back together, and everything will be fine.

[cvergi01]

The overheating has me confused. It should have smoked like crazy and blew oil out of every seal, but not overheat.

maybe oil got pushed through the head gasket, and into the coolant jackets around the cylinders due to the high compression? with enough oil in the coolant, it would certainly have a tough time shedding temp.

Get the fluids right and fire it up! What's the worst that could happen?

[Ou2mame]

I'm calling hoax lol.. Really? Even my gf wouldn't put 10qt of oil in her engine, and she doesn't even know what oil is really, or what an engine is... Or how her car works at all. I'm pretty sure she believes in magic to be honest.

[Sommerfeldt]

I'm calling hoax lol.. Really? Even my gf wouldn't put 10qt of oil in her engine, and she doesn't even know what oil is really, or what an engine is... Or how her car works at all. I'm pretty sure she believes in magic to be honest.

There seem to be people here who have done similar things, so don't "lol" it right away. I can definitely see how this has happened. The observant reader will see that OP says he "drained 10 quarts" and that he now knows that oil lamp means low pressure, not low volume. What's happened here is that he's had the oil lamp come on, assumed low volume, put too much in - not checking dipstick, I'm thinking, and the resulting volume of this is a total of 10 quarts in the engine. "lol"

Now, accounting for that, I'm not sure draining it and filling the right amount of oil in it will fix the issue, since the low pressure was there before the excess oil was put in. If the resulting 10 quarts of oil made the oil pressure warning go off, then that's due to volume. Any damage in there might be from either the preceding low pressure, or the enormous excess volume that was introduced.

- S
"lol"

[rspi]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll


One of the first things I read on the linked page was "don't feed the troll". I like that a lot.