will putting too much oil in a car make it smoke from the exhaust / drive weird?

joeyboy

I can't believe I'm even helping them with this, but long story short my mom's car is a complete beater and my she still let's my little brother drive it even though it's on its last legs. It leaks oil like crazy.

So, yesterday, my brother puts in oil (2 quarts I think), and being an idiot, he doens't use teh stick properly and put too much in. When they started it after that, it felt weird and let out massive amounts of smoke from the exhaust.


I told them that, if it ran fine before hand, you put in oil and the dipstick said 'too much', now you have problems, just take some oil out!


But they're *dead broke*, so buying an oil filter wrench is out of the question, I told them maybe try syphoning it out.

Does that sound like what would cause their problem, too much oil? Seems pretty cut and dry to me, they put too much in, and directly after that it had a problem. Seems pretty simple lol. As far as explaining to them what to do next, I'm kind of at a loss... (it's an older/junker saturn if that matters, can't believe it's even made it this long! Really sad when you think about it that my fiance and I both have cars that are worth many, many, many times what my mom's/brohter's is. Guess that's teh way it goes sometimes!

Sammy

Dont need an oil filter wrench.. Just LOOSEN the oil pan drain plug to drop the appropriate amount....

Might check a spark plug or two a week down the road and see if they need cleaned after all that smoke...

send_it_all

I'm not following why they would need an oil filter wrench to remove oil from the pan...there is a little thingy called a drain plug on the bottom of the oil pan, which is on the bottom of the engine. Take the plug out, let a little oil drain out. Put plug back in. Check oil, repeat as necessary.

joeyboy

I thought that's what they'd need, I didn't know there was a drain spot besides that (I thought they removed the filter to drain - I'm pretty car mechanic naive. I know a *decent* amount about specific honda performance stuff from when I had my little sporty / seriously modified honda, but past that I dunno much).

Thanks for the tips, looks like housework will go on hold tomorrow so I can help them out!

slickshift

And yeah too much oil can make it smoke
Couple of other things too...it's almost worse than being a qt. low
Shouldn't be anything major though, as it's already a leaker
Plugs might get fouled (which would make it run weird)...it can burn off if it's not too bad
Might need to pull and clean them