Check the Right Dipstick

Recently we had a customer come in because they checked their oil and didn’t see anything on the dipstick, so they added oil. Checked again, still nothing, so they added more. And again.

2018_10_01_01.jpg

Problem was, they were checking the wrong dipstick. They were accidentally checking the transmission fluid, leading to them overfilling the engine oil by 2 or 3 quarts. Luckily, this didn’t seem to cause any damage, but overfilling your oil can actually destroy your engine. If the oil level is high enough, it will reach the crankshaft, which will start churning up the oil, aerating it. Oil full of air cannot be pressurized as well, leading to low oil pressure, which is turn can cause bearing failure. Always make sure your engine has enough oil, but not too much.


New blog posts every Monday and Thursday, plus pictures throughout the week on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!

Mechanical Malarkey T-shirts, hats, and stickers are available to order!

-Dan

This entry was posted in In The Shop and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s