Nuke

If the overage is bothering you that much, get dirty. Put her up on the ramps, have your drain pan and rags ready and crack the drain plug enough to let about 1/2 - 1 cup worth out. Unless you intend on using the siphon frequently, I wouldn't bother getting one. Just bite the bullet and drain some.

Goldenpony

As others have said, a little over the full line won't hurt anything. Don't sweat it.

Norm Peterson

Rick - this whole thread reminds me of a guy at the Salem site who discovered and got all obsessed over the fact that his new SUV - a Mitsubishi, IIRC - was overfilled by 3 or 4 fluid ounces. I think after 3 or 4 days of agonizing over it he finally did remove some.


I don't know what the guys who are autocrossing or open-tracking their S197's are doing about it, but every car I've ever autocrossed I've intentionally overfilled by anywhere from 1/8" up to about 1/4" just to provide a little extra margin against uncovering the pickup during sustained hard cornering. Typically, that corresponds to something like 1/3 to 1/2 quart.


Norm

Nuke

It wasn't me, Norm, when I was at the Salem/Hope Creek site (at least I won't admit to it if it was...).

The shop I used to have my riding mower serviced told me to do the same thing (slightly overfill) with my mower due to the hills on my property.

157dB

Yea, kinda like sucking a thick DQ shake thru a straw.
WHY.
Get a SureDrain and call it a day.

Sorry, wrong link. Try HERE.

That allows you to remove even a small amount without
loosing it all.

And marine application engines have a way bigger
dipstick tube than vehicle engines just for that purpose.
So cross use would be impossable without a smaller
suck out tube.

Norm, if you are uncovering a pick-up tube with the OEM oil level,
you must be pulling a lot more Gs in the turns than a lot of us here.

Norm Peterson

Probably

It's more of a precaution than a fix for a known condition. A known precaution, actually. Maybe think of it as a cheap way of getting a little of what an Accusump gives you a lot of.

If you've been at higher rpms for a bit, you've got some of your oil packed up under the valve/cam covers, and if you are getting up above 0.7 lat-g the oil under the outboard side cam cover has very little incentive to drain back down into the pan even though the pump keeps sending more up there. At 1g with a 90° V engine, it will just sit there, since the resultant of gravity (down) and 1g lateral is at 45° making your outside 45° bank angle look just like the bottom of the sump when the car is stopped. So the oil just sits there. Whatever is in the drain passages will "drain" back up there actually, once you consider that the car has rolled a few degrees and dragged the engine over with it. Bottom line is that there's less in the sump, and its free surface will be sloped according to the lat-g level. More or less, since there's going to be slosh.

I've built up a few engines, and while I sort of enjoy working on them to improve things, I don't like to have to keep fixing them just to keep them where they're at.


Norm

CincyGT2009

Yes, proper oil circulation is a serious concern in high-G driving! My dad has a 2001 Z06 and GM specifies that you add 0.5 quarts of additional oil for on-track use. This is why dry-sump oil systems are provided on some cars, such as the new ZR-1...

steve r

why go through such a project of getting out of the dipstick hole?? just loosen the drain plug and let some come out and re-tighten it..

JAJ

I don't remember where the article is on the Coyote design process, but they did talk about the oil return ducts cast into the block and how they were tested to make sure they didn't fill up at high lateral g's. I think the strategy is to angle the ducts away from the cylinders as they approach the sump so they're still "downhill" at more than 1 g. That way if the pan's deep enough and the oil still drains into it, the pump is never exposed to the air. Easier to do with an 8 quart sump than with a 4 or 5 quart sump.

JAJ

Oh, and as to the original question, it's dead easy to take oil out of the dipstick hole if you only need to drop the level an small amount. A Mighty-Vac works wonders.

On three of the cars I've owned in the last 10 years, I changed the oil only with a lift pump. One of the cars - a 2003 BMW M5 with a 400HP 5.0 liter V8 - never had the drain plug removed - the dealer used a lift pump too for all the changes they did. With the oil filter on the top of the engine, an oil change is both easy and very tidy. One criticism of the technique is that "you don't get all the old oil out" but then you don't get it all out with the sump drain either.