I did an oil change. Thought the car took 4.4 quarts but it only takes 3.7 quarts. I poured in slightly under 4 quarts. The engine is a 1.5 in-line turbo (Honda Civic Si). It’s reading past the fill line slightly. How bad is it? Do I need to pour some out? What am I risking? What symptoms should I be looking for?
When it’s still somewhat reasonable “too much”, as opposed to flooding the entire engine block with oil, the worst case scenario is that the piston rings get damaged, resulting in small amounts of oil making its way into the combustion chamber and gets burned off. Long term effects of this is that the engine consumes a little bit of oil.
In your case, I think you’ll be fine. It’s so little over, that I wouldn’t worry about it. You might see the engine burn off some oil and eventually stabilize on a more healthy level. Check the dip stick or whatever it’s called in English regularly, and see if it decreases (slowly) to the correct level.
Not decreasing: It’s fine
Decreasing and stabilizing: Best case scenario
Decreasing and doesn’t stabilize (not likely): Damaged piston rings. Slightly reduced engine performance, and your car has an mpg for oil now. Otherwise it’s fine. It’s worth noting that damaged piston rings is common in old cars, and it may have been like this from before.
Source: I am no expert, so take what I say with a bucket of salt. I did experience the last scenario myself about 15 years ago. I still drive it with no long term effects.
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Had an old accord that started burning oil at about 100k miles. Lasted another 100k with only a handful of oil changes (I think none in it’s last 50k, just topping it off as needed). Still worked perfectly fine besides very slowly burning oil when I totaled it at 200k miles.
I miss that car. I’m convinced I could’ve gotten at least 300k miles out of it.
This kind of neglect of proper maintenance is why it started burning oil at 100k.
If you want your engine to last, you change the oil every 5000 to 7500 miles.
Lol. Old Honda engines are known for essentially not needing oil. I have a B18 that refuses to die. It’s leaked so much oil before that I got barely a quart and a half out once. I try to top it up every once in a while but with 267k and just about everything else falling on the car, I’m about to stop bothering with oil on it all together so I can justify a new (to me) car.
Being able to take a beating and “not needing oil” are 2 wildly different situations lmao.
My old jeep with the 4.0 was like that. I just kept adding oil every week or two when it got down past the safe zone, not doing any oil changes for about 60k. That thing had about 260k on it when the transmission blew up and I didn’t have the time or money to keep going with it. My 2010 is damn near the same at 180k (the pos 3.8), but that motor is due to be swapped soon due to loss of compression.
Read the manual. Changing the oil too soon is not helpful. modern oils often give the least wear at 8000 miles (the longest chain moleculs break down and that is accounted for by making the longer than needed.
if you really want the engine to last install a bypass filter use 25k mile oil and then do an oil analisys every 10k miles when you replace the filters - only changa oil when the lab says so. the lab will charge more than the cost of an oil change which is why almost nobody does this.
for most of us the engine will out last the gest of the car with just regular oil changes so this above is not useful advice.
We did routine oil changes between 5-6k miles until it started burning oil. I assure you, that was not the issue. We spent a while trying to figure it out before saying fuck it because it never gave us issues.
I hope the shopping cart that dinged your bumper was okay…
Oh trust me, if It was drivable, I would’ve kept it.
Unfortunately a younger, much more sleep deprived me flipped it one morning.
Loved that damn car