Rookie Mistake
 

:bonk: Wanted to get a second or third opinion on a rookie mistake I made the other day leaving for a car show.

It appears I may have slightly overfilled my engines oil. I'm attaching a photo of a dipstick reading after letting idle to 200f then being shut down for 10 mins in my garage.

The red line is where the oil just about reads when the motor is completely cold in the morning. Checking my last oil bottle, I have about 0.5 to 0.6q left.

Am I paranoid or should I do another oil change? Brand new car, just dont want to have any issues. In my past two twins I never had them over the top line so I feel like a goof.

It’s fine. Don’t sweat it.

+1

there's a lot of oil that goes into the valves and filter up top that tends to drain down.

boxer motors also tend to burn more oil than straight or v-type motors due to the design. so it's also not terrible to have slightly more to compensate for nearing the end of the oils lifespan

:slap: STOP worrying about stuff like that.

;)

Doesnt that only apply if the piston rings or the head gaskets dont do its job properly?

you're thinking of the temporary sealing of piston rings, which is an old mechanics trick to check if rings are going bad.

what i'm talking about is the routine oil consumption of the motor. because the boxer motor cylinders are sideways, the oil tends to not drain down out of the cylinder bores as much as it would in an upright inline-cylinder, or v-style layout. that results in slightly increased oil consumption.

given I don’t track my cars, occasionally spirited driving I never noticed any sort of oil consumption in my two FA20 twins prior to this. (havent really noticed any consumption on this car either)

Outside of the motor design itself, do you think that would have a fair bit to do with it? I should probably note that I change my oil very preventative. Like every 3,500 Miles.

I would consider that a perfect oil level. I prefer a tad over vs under for any car that gets driven hard.

Unless you have bad seals you're not going to see oil consumption in 3500 miles significant enough to really measure.

I could be wrong, but I'd expect that if you can burn enough oil to notice the level drop in that short an interval you'd smell oil burning fairly regularly.

If you do there will be a cloud of smoke for miles behind you!

Whoa found my garage twin lol. Nice mqb Tiguan SEL :)

Btw slight overfill like that is nothing to worry about. That’s the level I’ve got my BRZ at (and my FR-S for 10 years prior).

In my experience (grew up driving cars older than I was) there's a bit of distance between "doesn't burn oil" and "smoky exhaust" where you smell the oil burning but don't see it.

We had an old 1970 Ford LTD that you'd need to put a half quart of 10W40 in every month or so, but it never visibly smoked. Sure it looked like James Bond on cold mornings but that was more moisture than anything else.

I miss popping the hood on a car and then climbing in to sit on the fender with my legs in the engine bay while I worked.

Yep a big old 8 could burn that much oil with almost no smoke.
I found that the smaller the displacement the less oil it takes to have visible smoke. My wife's first car was a $50 Datsun B210 that at about 1/2 a quart a month would leave a trail behind her that you could follow for 1/2 an hour.
I probably exaggerated a little but the boxer engine burning that much oil is going to have visible smoke.

I daily drove cars older or just slightly younger than me until about 1996.

This poor old girl had pretty much no rings left by 1981 so I know me some oil burning!