Sparky, is that your car, or.....?

 

LOL!!!

 

There are two ways of checking the oil level. The usual method of waiting 10 minutes and using the stalk to view is is more of an average. To use the service method which displays the actual level you need put the car in park and pop the bonnet then:

To enter Service Mode:
– Scroll through the trip menu to access the oil level display.
– Press the cruise control CANCEL button twice within 2 seconds.
– The instrument pack display will revert to the normal display in the trip computer.
– Scroll through the trip menu to access the oil level display once more.

 

I agree and from what I have seen and with discussions with the dealer service tech the lowest point in the oil pan is the extraction tube.

 

 

OK all. I'll go through this once again.
Changed the oil and filter. Removed about 7.5 Liters ( I mis-spoke when I wrote quarts earlier.).
Refilled with same and replaced filter.
checked edipstick. Read normal just like the picture of one of the posters.
Drove the car about 3 miles. At a gas station I noticed smoke from under the hood.
Let the engine cool about 20 min, checked edipstick. This is IMPORTANT. It looked like the pic in the owners manual that said add 1 L. There was still a bit of orange color at the extreme left end of the edipstick picture. Manual just says to add oil, but nothing about not driving the car.
The owners manual shows a picture of NO ORANGE COLOR in the bar graph picture at all and says if it looks like this don't drive. It also says that some sort of oil critical message will show up in the message center. Since I saw a little orange and no message I drove the car another 10 miles home.

OK folks here comes the really wild part.
I added 1 quart, checked the edipstick, still 1 L low (as per picture in manual)
I added another quart and STILL pictured as 1 L low. Ran the car a couple of min, checked, same level.
At this point I started posting.
I extracted the oil, a couple of times so only air was coming out and guess how much oil I extracted?
Ding Ding Ding
About 2.5 Liters!!! oh crap!
So that means that I was actually driving the car with a 1/2 Liter of oil in it! OMG!
Well, nothing left to do but pump the oil back in and top off for a total of 7.5 L (which is what my 2010 manual says)
I removed the leaking oil filter, and found that the gasket was torn. I hadn't noticed any leak when I changed the filter and ran the car and looked at it. Guess it either didn't leak then or I missed it.
Edipstick reads normal.

I have now driven at least 100 mi, no further leaking, and after repeated checks the oil level is at normal.
The engine sounds fine, and I can't tell any difference in performance.
I could take it to the dealer, but what would I ask them to do? Compression check? Anything?
I will not claim that I've dodged the bullet. I could be driving a car with 23,000 miles that has the engine of a 300,000 mile car now, but I don't know what else to do.
Not planning any long trips soon...
Thanks --most of you--- for your help.
Any diagnostic suggestions, or further testing ideas would be welcome.

 

Hmmm, it's great that all is normal now and it reall sounds like you have nothing to be concerned with now. Certainly there should be concern when lubricant runs low it does not appear that you have abused it by allowing it to continue for long. In the end, engine specs usually allow for over 125% protection which I would guess you've come no where near exceeding. If all is running well now there is no reason to think it is actually damaged and requires more diagnostics. You could take it to a shop & ask for things like a compression test and the like but I believe you'd be throwing money at a non-issue.

As fas as suggestions, I would say to try to approach it the same way a dealship would, ie. pull the oil out, change the filter, put the prescribed amount of fresh oil back, run it for a min or two and check the level....and only adjust if needed.

 

A quandary... Where are those five liters of oil???
Have you checked the cooling reservoir? If the coolant looks milky, you may have a problem.

 

Just an FYI you are not low on oil. If you have a solid bar filling the two red bars on the right you have TO MUCH OIL. The solid bar should stop at the two red bars.

 

Sell that car tout suite! That's what a dealer would do.

 

Hey all, my oil gauge now looks like the jagtoes one. It looked like that after I refilled the oil. all good.
Maybe I didn't make this part clear enough Cee Jay, but the oil was leaking from the filter housing after I did the oil change. I must have damaged the gasket when I was installing the new one. When I stopped and noticed the smoke coming from under the hood I noticed that the oil was leaking from the junction between the filter housing. Once I removed and replaced the gasket, no more leaking. So the 5 qts/liters of oil leaked onto the engine and it's still sort of burning off and dripping. Its not in the coolant or elsewhere.
The remaining question of course is what long term damage have I done, and I guess I won't know until the engine seizes.
Anyone wanna buy a low mileage 2010? Sparky?
Only kidding --I think.

 

I got that part, but over a gallon of oil is hard to miss. Anywhere.

 

Perhaps I missed it in all the grouching, but these are the capacities stated in the workshop manual:

Engine oil, initial fill: 8.75 litres N/A, 8.90 litres S/C
Engine oil, service fill with oil filter change: 7.25 litres

So, sticking 7 litres in after an oil & filter change was about right. And when you re-extracted it, some would have stayed in the new filter & associated plumbing, so there was probably more than 2.5 litres in there.

I can't tell you for sure whether the engine has been affected by running with low oil, but for what it's worth: there are a lot of things that would misbehave if the car was actually oil-starved, e.g. the VVT system relies on oil pressure. The fact that the engine ran OK would suggest there was sufficient oil to maintain oil pressure. And you didn't get either the amber "ENGINE OIL LOW" or red "ENGINE OIL CRITICALLY LOW" messages on the dash. That probably means you dodged a bullet.

 

AVMiii,
I can appreciate you are frustrated to some degree.

If one was **** about possible damage, run some engine flush (the good kind- it can even be oil) through there. Oil is a cooler and low coolant will create a runaway situation of developing gumming. An this is not a forgiving engine in that regard. The amount of oil you stated that the engine was run with seems impossible. The pickup does not go that low I believe.

As others have guardedly stated, and I will try to be profuse, you must look for that 5liters of oil. It does not just disappear without making a massive mess- somewhere.
Maybe NBCat or other qualified folks can comment if it is even possible to spew that much oil from a leaking oil filter gasket in the short amount of miles you stated.

Here is what I would do no matter what- take the plastic trays under the car out.
While there, remove the drain plug and pull the oil out so as to know without the shadow of the doubt. You can put the oil back.

 

As to where the oil went, a bunch of it went onto the top of the engine and seems mostly to be burned off. No more smoking after 100 mi, but a little residual smell. Could very well be some under the engine though. I did see some spots in the driveway and garage. I will try to get under the car this weekend and investigate. One other thought or question. I have not yet reset the oil service message. Any chance that this would prevent the amber "ENGINE OIL LOW" or red "ENGINE OIL CRITICALLY LOW" messages from appearing?

 

Seems very unlikely. The alerts shouldn't ever be suppressed - they're vital. And, from experience, when there is more than one message, it shows them all in rotation.

 

The third and final warning is to the point:
Engine Oil Low
Engine Oil CRITICAL
YOU ARE DONE FOR