Overfilled oil, now sluggish?

[pyro-rwd]

This is bascially a copy/paste job from BF, so here goes.

==========

So apparently I was driving a little harder than I thought and the idiot oil light came on in a corner... again. (I'm aware this is a pressure light and that I should be scared, btw. And I was.) So I pull over and check the level. It's ever so slightly below the low mark on the dipstick. So I buy 2 quarts of pennzoil 20w50 across the street at RiteAid. I put in the first, wait a couple of minutes, check, halfway between empty and full. Put in second quart, wait, check, just a bit below full mark. Great, so I go drive home. Car feels great, as usual.

So nothing happens the next day, and I casually check the level and it's about 2/3 from low to full mark. I had about 0.7Qt left in a kendall bottle, so I just dumped that in there. Didn't really bother to turn on the engine afterwards. So a later yesterday, I decide to go to safeway. I get going, and the motor is cold and slow to respond as usual. It gets to the usual 1/4 on the temp guage, as I pull up to a light. Now I usually have a pretty loud exhaust, but this time it was almost a deafening throaty GRUMBLE and I heard a lot of tap from the engine. I take off at the light, and the throttle feels a bit slow to respond, almost like the motor is cold.

I didn't see any smoke coming from the exhaust, but it did smell a bit like burning oil.

I'm guessing I overfilled it about 1/2 to 1 Qt or so. Any danger in doing this? Is this a common thing?

I searched, and found a lot of e36 m3 threads. Apparently they overfill by like 1Qt ALL THE TIME on purpose, so I'm wondering about the specifics of the e30.

I guess I'm due for an oil change at about 4k with always adding new oil, and a k&n gold filter.

What do you guys think?

==========

Since then I changed the oil, filter, plugs to oem, added a fuel injector cleaner. It ran a little better after the plug change, but it still exhibits the same shake and low rumbling sound.

When it gets to about 1.8K rpm, the motor starts pretty violently shaking left and right (I would guess about 1/2 inch of movement). Then at about 2.2k, it appears to work normally. What would cause such shake?

Also, over the past couple of weeks, after I shorted a jumpstart and the fusible link blew, the starter has been taking a little while longer of a crank to turn over, and when it does, it seems to stuggle a bit. Can this be related?

The only other thing I can think that I did after overfilling the oil was bolting down the DME. Before that, it was just lying there in the glovebox.

Any ideas, guys? I really don't want to part this car

EDIT: Oh, and valves were adjusted less than 5k ago. I'm thinking of going back to the mechanic and getting readujusted for free under 12k/12mo warranty on labor. Anybody heard of valves being bad after 5k due to heavy driving? And having it appear out of nowhere?

[pyro-rwd]

Oh and also, the coil tests 0.7 on primary, but 6250 on secondary. Bentley says to get new one after 5000. Should I?

[BMWCowboy]

The shake might be caused by a ~bad motor mount???>>and possibly your valves are too tight???

[pyro-rwd]

Ah, okay that makes sense. I've had 2 bad motor mounts, they were split horizontally in half. Can the mounts be bad and appear okay visually?

Can the valves go from okay to too tight in 5k?

In any case, the same mechanic did the mounts and valves, so it's clear what I'm doing on monday. Thx.

[BMWCowboy]

no they have to be set tight>>they wont tighten on their own

[pyro-rwd]

So I guess that's ruled out as they were tightened 5k ago and this wasn't happening?

I'll go look at the mounts.

Can this much shake cause hesitation?

[BMWCowboy]

I doubt the mounts would cause hesitation

[pyro-rwd]

Mounts are ok, as they should be, after being replaced 3k ago. Any other ideas?

At about 1.8-2k RPM, it shakes at idle and hesitates the most.

[BMWCowboy]

~bad coils??>>loose/cracked plugs??

[BMWCowboy]

With the car idling pull each coil one at a time>>if it gets worse then thats NOT ur problem>>if it stays the same~~>BiNGO!!

[pyro-rwd]

Hmm, the coil does have high resistance. When you say each coil... what exactly do you mean. Just changed the plugs yesterday.

EDIT: Not sure if I made it clear that this is an e30?

This seems to be the only coil.

[pyro-rwd]

Just retested the coil, it seems to be getting worse. It just showed 0.8 and 6570 @ 5000 max. I guess I'll be replacing that regardless. :/

[BMWCowboy]

o0o0oh i wz thinking e-36-->U could still pull each plug wire to make sure its not a bad wire or plug

[pyro-rwd]

Ah yea, I'll do that.

Well, I'm about to order a punch of parts. BMW wants like $90 for the coil, so I'll order it up after I test the wires. Hopefully it'll s come soon enough.

Any risk of bigtime damage running on a bad coil/wires/weak spark for a week?

I love the 'other people bought this feature'. It went from 1 item to all this :


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Subtotal: $196.45
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Total price: $196.45

[pyro-rwd]

Ok, so here are the spark plug wire figures.

Cyl1 5390
Cyl2 5600
Cyl3 6040
Cyl4 6230
Cyl5 6090
Cyl6 6200

Coil 1700

Spec is for wires is 5000 +/- 1000, which is pretty much ok.

Coil is 1000+/- 200, so the coil wire is out of spec.


I assume it's not possible just to replace the coil wire.

[pyro-rwd]

Hmm, well I put in a bottle of fuel system cleaner yesterday and felt a lot of hesitation got away today. This makes sense to be injectors or fuel filter, which I'll be changing today. Hmm.