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

[cvergi01]

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.

That's funny.

magic.

[matthew1]

I've done a stupid thing or two when working on my 850.

[erikv11]

Alas, so have I.

[ViktorNova]

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.

Thank you Ozark Lee and everyone else who chimed in, this is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for - I have been wanting to start it up but didn't want to cause further damage, so now that I have a plan I will report back with the results.

Do you guys think I should replace the oil filter first, or just remove the spark plugs and let it rip?

[abscate]

Leave the filter alone, pull plugs and crank. Watch to see if oil spews out and catch on things you can throw away.

you are going to save this one...

[regent]

To minimize the mess, you could try suctioning most of the oil from the bores with a syringe+some tubing through the plug ports, and then crank. To be on the safe side, I would not hesitate about changing that $5.00 oil filter before cranking her up again.

Let's hope she runs nice again, good luck

[rspi]

Mighty Vac:

[matthew1]

I bought a siphon at Oreillys yesterday for $3.50. One side is long enough to get to oil from the filler cap.

[Sommerfeldt]

I gotta say, I'm worried about this "just fill'er up and crank it" stuff. There was a reason for the low pressure warning in the first place, unless my understanding of the original post is way off. The 2 most important things in caring for these engines is shut them off when they either a) overheat or b) lose oil pressure. Tolerances for those 2 things are slim.

- S

[j-dawg]

I haven't experienced it on the Volvo, but some cars illuminate the oil lamp before pressure builds up.