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13K views 30 replies 16 participants last post by  Wilbo 
#1 ·
I've had a bit of an issue and am quite worried... I did an oil check the other week and there was no oil whatsoever on the dipstick (not too worried since I rarely drive the car), so I bought a 4 litre bottle of oil to fill it up.

Being rather clumsy and with little thought I just poured the whole 4 litres into the engine and am worried I have put too much oil in. If I check the dipstick, the whole plastic orange tip has oil on it (so a good 1.5cm above the actual measurement lines on the dipstick).

I took the car for a quick spin and it sounds / drives fine however am still rather concerned and have now gone from too little oil to too much.

Hope someone with some technical knowledge could guide me? Thanks
 
#8 ·
Jack up, undo the bolt a little bit, then unscrew it by hand slowly, as oil starts to drip out, leave it for a while. Oil will drain without the bolt being fully removed. Its fairly simple. Then re tighten.

Its not rocket science, you may get some oil on your hand, but if your worried about getting a little dirty then you need to get bigger balls :lol:
 
#22 ·
Haha what a **** this boy is :lol:

13mm spanner ( i think) loosen the nut, and drain some out.

While your sticking new oil in, you should put in some sand!!! It will help polish your head and valves, gives about 10 bhp and a super clean engine inside :D :D
 
#26 ·
All sorted lads, thanks for the help. Mr AA said the Mini dipstick is one of the worst he's seen.. one minute it was showing it to be completely full, the next minute only half way up the dipstick!

After doing it a number of times I'm pretty sure it's roughly about 1/4 of the way up the dipstick now (probably drained a little too much), so may just buy 1 litre and top up about 300-400ml.
 
#28 ·
thats any dipstick, it takes time for oil to soak through the engine, and settle, also it peaks and falls, its why you always add 1l max at a time when topping up, wait a bit then add more if needed. its simples
 
#27 ·
tip, the volume difference from minimum to maximum is around 1 litre
 
#29 · (Edited)
Sorry to raise an old thread chaps, but for the second time I've just had this same problem (well not quite, as I didn't just whack 4 litres in)...

Basically oil was at the bottom of the dipstick, about 15-20% of the way up the honeycomb section. So, with the idea of the honeycomb section being 1 litre, I figured it was empty by 0.8 litre. I put in 0.7 litre and checked the dipstick. The oil level is now showing above the dipstick, probably by about 0.5 - 1 cm.

Are we sure that the dipstick (and by that I mean honeycomb section) is 1 litre!?

Do I also need to drain some? :(

eta: I've just checked it again and I would say, that if the hashed area is 1 litre, then the car has about 200ml / 0.2 litre too much. Oh well, I probably don't need to drive th car for a week anyway, so I'll just check again in a few days. And hope it leaks a bit ;)
 
#30 ·
let it settle and circulate through the engine

srsly though [past tense] I did oil changes every 5k on my old cooper S and never manged to mess it up, its not hard folks [/past tense]
 
#31 ·
Yeah, well I'm on your side here - I don't know how the hell I've managed to feck it up. Twice!

I regularly check how much is going in, but always against the bottle, probably because I'm expecting that damn dipstick to explode as soon as I touch it. Hideous design error.
 
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