Did I ruin my engine?

tow it to the dealer and let them fix it. in the future, let someone else do it

 

Just drain the old 6 quarts out, but leave the new oil in there. Your motor is fine.

 

amazing, never heard of that, 12qts!

i would be a neurotic MF watching for crusty gaskets from here on out! although just idling so likely no crazy pressures. "likely" hmmm..

 

I doubt there is any damage. The rotating assembly whipping the oil into a foam is the danger of overfilling, and at idle I doubt that happened.

 

Did you have any breakfast before changing the oil?

JK - I think ur good man!

 

I don't really get the guys giving the OP a hard time and telling him to just pay for service. You never make mistakes? I could totally see this happening to me on an off day, when work or life is particularly stressful.

Anyway, crap like this happens at dealers too. My wife had her Honda come back from the dealer overfilled by a quart. She drove it 30 miles home. Good thing I checked it because we were headed on a 600 mile road trip the next morning. I had to stay up late draining the extra quart on a dark, cold, and wet driveway, which was a pain. This kind of thing is why I said to hell with Toyota Care and started doing my own maintenance from the very beginning.

OP, I think you will be just fine. The Honda still drives fine after 40K miles. Just keep an eye on things under the hood and address problems if they come up. No sense in obsessing over it and going through all the what-ifs.

 

@siznarf you read this shit?

OP - Your seals may have gotten messed up. Too much pressure buildup.

 

I just spit my coffee ... yes, at 3:15PM





Real question is: how the hell did 12 quarts fit lol

@roguegs

 

@siznarf better yet...how the fuck do you drain out the "old" oil if they are mixed together already....

 

the old oil is at the bottom of the pan obviously

 

I like when people share these kinds of stories. Makes my oops moments seem normal.

In high school I forgot to put the drain plug back in once. Didn't realize it until I noticed the pool of brand new oil at my feet... haha

I was pissed though.

 

When I was 15 I was a know-it-all and parked my acura on my slanted driveway. "Checked" transmission fluid it was "low." Put a little over a quart in and drove it the next day to work. BOOM. Transmission blew.

 

Well, first you start by removing your sarcasm deflector

 

Since there is a huge collection of people who own tools but have absolutely no formal training or experience worth a lick on this particular discussion here goes:

Piston goes up and on the downstroke it encounters an incompressible fluid (oil). Since it won’t compress the oil has to go somewhere. It will go past the rings, past seals (and possibly blow them out permanently and maybe not), into your valve cover breathers etc. If after trying to escape any of the aforementioned places the pressure created by the downward piston can’t vent somehow then it becomes a containment issue. Can the enclosure contain the pressure? If it can’t you break a rod, twist a crank or the pressure will do whatever to escape even blowing a hole in your bottom end. Whichever is the weakest and easiest way to vent the pressure. Also remember the crank pulls pistons and on ignition those pistons push the crank. So the downward push of one piston through the crank tries to pull another piston into the incompressible oil and that’s how cranks, rods and pistons meet their end.

So for those in the “it’s fine” camp you obviously don’t know jack. For those in the “it’s catastrophic” camp unless you can actually list the possibilities you also don’t know jack. In reality the answer runs in the drain it and refill and keep an eye on everything. If something did happen it will show up in time. Maybe in the next 5 miles or maybe thousands of miles later. The dice have been rolled and only time will provide the answer on this one. While oil pump issues are valid concerns the time involved and the nature of Gerotor pumps makes me say this is highly unlikely to have damaged the pump. However it may be possible that aerated oil did get pumped to critical areas. Due to the low load of idle I would still argue that this is a non concern and the real concern is the issue of trying to compress the oil with the downward stroke of the piston. (The design of the bottom end may or may not allow oil to easily move from the area under one piston to the next which would increase or decrease the likelihood of this damage). At idle things might have happened slow enough for oil to vacate to other areas as the pistons move.

This is a situation where you made a small expensive mistake or dodged a huge bullet. Seals are the biggest concerns like others have suggested. Beyond that I would expect any massive damage would have been evident in those 5 minutes and noises would have been evident either during or after draining oil. If it locked up during the time you were overfilled then you get the picture. I would going forward be checking my oil level daily at first and then weekly for the next while.

I wish I had good news for the OP. This is a wait and see situation.

 

Exracer2: Well said.

I see forums as being kind of like opening your hood in front of Advance Auto. You’ll get lots of opinions and if you’re lucky, someone who is knowledgeable will walk by and chime in. As for all my mechanical skills, they were learned by screwing something up with hubris. Followed by panic and researching.

 

Whatever you do, don't mention that you did this to the dealership, it will most certainly void the 100,000 mile powertrain warranty. As long as you shut the engine off before it was hydraulically locked you should be fine. Drain the oil out, ALL OF IT this time. Fill it back to the correct amount. Check the dipstick before you fire it up just to be sure the level is correct. Fire it up for about 30 seconds. Shut the engine off. Check the dipstick again and if its at the correct level, you should be good to go. Any excess oil stuck in the combustion chamber will just burn off. But like I said, Do NOT tell the dealership you did this if the engine does fail because then it will be considered "abuse" and they'll make you pay.

 

With the exception that there are 6 pistons in this engine! All
Of which are in various stages of the stroke. Can the cylinders accommodate 6 additional quarts of oil? Absolutely! Without question! Did his oil get a bit foamy? For sure! Did the oil pick up tube suck in aerated oil? Maybe. Did it harm his engine. I doubt it.

 

This sounds good, but is mostly bullshit. The fact is there is as much volume created as disappears as the crank goes around. Think of it like this; one piston is going up, while one is going down. So the net volume inside the engine stays the same.

 

Agreed. Plenty of room down there to accommodate 6 additional quarts. Especially at idle. Yes the crank would be cutting through it and foaming up the oil but I seriously doubt he did any harm.