[Jones95]

Hi all,

Looking for a bit of advice. I got the car serviced recently and the technician advised me that the oil had risen above the F marker by a few mm. Now I added oil awhile before this just a top up but don’t believe I overfilled. He mentioned to keep an eye after this service as it could indicate injector problems.

Now the query I have is - after the service, cold - oil sat at F. In the manual it states to drive the car to operating temperature and sit for 5-10 mins and check. When I do this, the oil is about 2-3mm above the F ‘dot marker’. However, if I check when cold on a flat surface first thing, it’s about 2-3mm below the F marker, which indicates some oil has been used. Before I got the i30 I never heard of a car having oil checked at operating temp, only ever when cold.

What do you guys think? Do you check when cold or hot? Thanks in advance.

[Dazzler]

Sounds fine to me. If it is performing okay and the oil isn't consistently over the mark or below it on an ongoing basis just let sleeping dogs lie.   

[Jones95]

Hi Dazzler,

Thanks for getting back to me! Yeah, it is consistently either the couple of mm above (when checked at running temperature) and when cold is just below F. But hasn't changed so I'll keep an eye and not worry too much, thanks again! Just was confused when Hyundai recommended checking from hot, always checked when cold. Strange but oh well!

[BrendanP]

Oil expands when it's hot, hence the slight change in level. All the cars I've had in the last 20 years recommend checking the oil level when it's warmed up. I have found that the dealer has  sometimes over-filled the oil during a service, so the level is at least 10mm above the F mark. The owners handbook says the sump capacity is 5.6 litre (1.6 diesel), but when I change the oil and filter, I find 5 litre takes it up to the F mark.

[sundiz]

There has been lot of discussion of this previously. The hy diesels are a bit "weird" with the oil amount. Often when people change oil and fill it to full mark it rises few mm after that. Never had similar happen with other cars. Now when I change the oil, I fill it to few mm below F mark. Then it gets to the mark after few drives. For some reason these engines are easy to be overfilled.

As previously mentioned the oil capacity is a bit higher, but I have only been able to add 5.0 litres before getting full.

[BC]

Something to keep in mind is that the oil runs down into the sump better when the car is warm.  I either check after its been sitting overnight after an earlier drive so the oils settled or I wait 10 min after a drive to give the warm oil a chance to run back into the sump.

[Vitruvian]

I have read somewhere long time ago that this hapens on our cars because of unsuccessful DPF regenerations.
That mean that diesel is mixing with oil and rise level a bit with every unsuccessful regeneration proces.
For example when you turn off engine during regeneration.

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[sundiz]

I have read somewhere long time ago that this hapens on our cars because of unsuccessful DPF regenerations.
That mean that diesel is mixing with oil and rise level a bit with every unsuccessful regeneration proces.
For example when you turn off engine during regeneration.

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That is the case when oil keeps rising. Also faulty injectors/ injector seals may cause oil level rising as diesel gets mixed up with the oil.

Single rise after oil change is usually user error (overfill).