Starting issues after adding oil.
 

Hi

This weekend after adding oil the car didn't want to idle by itself. I drove about a mile after adding the oil when this started happening. It didn't seem to be low on power, just died when idling.

I drove the car home all and all was about 1.5 to 2 miles total distance covered.

The next day the car didn't want to start. I suspect it might also have been flooded in the process of trying to start it.

Any ideas what could cause the car to not Idle after adding oil?

It was new oil bottle so it was difficult to aim and did spill some. Could it possible be some electronics got drenched?

Thanks in advance.

check your intake tube and MAF sensor. You may have overfilled your oil.
If so, clean it out of the tube, clean the sensor and reset your battery (pull battery for 5 min)

Also, make sure to use a funnel when adding oil, if you don't it is possible for some to go into the intake from the breather hose.

That's assuming that wasn't what he did in the first place (for some reason unrelated to adding oil). Losing the learned trims will make the car idle like crap and have a tendency to stall at idle.

Hey, thanks for the replies.

I cleaned the MAF. I'm not sure what is classified as dirty, but there wasn't any wet oil on it, just a dusty layer on the teardrop thingy.

The intake tube also didn't have any running oil in it, it did have a lot of grease like substance in it though.

After I cleaned it I tried to start the car again but it didnt start. I realise now I forgot to reset the battery, how important is this?

I assumed the car was flooded and tried the deflooding procedure, the one that you push the accelerator pedal all the way down and almost drained the battery trying to get it to start.

After that didn't work I removed the sparkplugs and dried them with a hair dryer. The front sparkplugs were completely soaked in petrol.

After drying the spark plugs the car still didn't start. It seems to to take even less than before.

when was the last time you changed the coils?

I recently bought the cars and don't see any coil changes in the service history. The car has 62 000km on +- 40k miles.

I've got the car started now by towing it. I'ts way down on power and it seems to be a vibration effect when revving. If it was a piston engine I would think it's not firing on a cylinder, but it is not as weak or as bad as missing a complete cylinder.

The symptoms suggests ignition issues right? Theres no misfires though. And its also verrry difficult to start. Keeps on wanting to take but doesnt, I have to keep it at it for a few mins.

I'm still struggling to see the connection between the symptoms and adding oil. :( Maybe the oil spilled down onto the plugs or wires and caused an already weak ignition to fail? Although the car started first time everytime before all this.

oh almost forgot to mention, when idling it would idle at about 700 rpm for about 4 seconds then go up to 1200 for another 4 seconds. The idle is very rough and shakes the car a lot.

coils plugs and wires.

Possible theory: When you changed the old, what weight did you use? if the old oil was a 5w20 and OLD it would have thinned out even more and would have very low pumping resistance. if you put in a much heavier oil it would add more pumping resisitance and make it harder to start via a slower cranking RPM?

Also a older battery would lower your cranking RPM making it harder to start. once coils start going they go down hill pretty fast.

It just seems that the flooding has affected your car.

Then along with the flooding, there are potential to damage your sparks/ already weak coils/ cat converter.

Generally after a flood, people change their sparks.

Now another very far fetched theory, did you change to a full synthetic oil? There has been reports around saying that if you switch to synthetic when always using dino oil, it can dislodge carbon which has kept your compression

Thanks for the replies.

I did not change the oil, I just added about 500ml. It was 10w40 castrol magnatec. I'm from South-Africa and apparently we don't have non-synthetic. I'm not sure what oil was in before and was planning to replace the oil and filter in about 300kms.

I will investigate the spark plugs. When I was trying to deflood it, I dried a sparkplug and held them out of the motor to check for spark. The spark seemed to be everywhere but between the gap. I narrowed the gap and checked again and it sparked correctly between the gap. I only did this for the front 2 not really thinking it was an issue and thought it might just be cause of the flood.

Still no luck.

I checked the sparkplugs again and also reset the battery. As HwAoRrDk suggested it made the idling worse, it's not idling at all in fact.

I spilled a lot of oil on the purge solenoid valve (i think) the one right by the oil input. Could this possibly have to do with the issues im having?

You need to measure the gap and set them correctly. The plug will arc to the best ground when it isn't installed...so closing the gap likely just screwed up the plug :(

Often a trailing coil will fail and result in really crappy idle and OK running at higher RPM's.....speed the motor up to about 1200 and see how it idles there, if it is smooth then check the T plugs for missfiring

The oil on the purge solenoid will be fine :)

Get new plugs and then clean your throttle body......or clean the throttle body first but seems like you are wasting time trying to save plugs.
If the Butterfly valve is sticking in the throttle body, then it will not hold an idle. When you get it running, does it run okay as long as you have your foot in the throttle?

I changed the sparkplug gaps back to the standard size. (The plugs we get here does have a tip) This seems to have fixed the roughness and power alot. It's difficult to say really since I've been driving my mx6 for 2 weeks now, but it seems that the power is what it was. I forgot how revvy the 8 is :)

Anyway, start is still n pain and idle is still a no go. I'm considering replacing plugs and oil as the break in period is now basically complete. The plugs doesn't look that bad but I think with all my messing around I probably damaged it.

The no-idle situation occurred after resetting the KAM by removing the battery terminals. How long does it take to rebuild fuel trims?

About 3-5 drive cycles................sometimes. It will usually happen quicker than that yet. I'm telling you that you should think about cleaning your throttle body(and that's the last time I will say it) for the idle issue. It won't help with the long cranks, but you can search out that answer on what it might be..........if it's not already in this thread.

I will definitely clean out the tb. It might even help with the starting since it seems to be more a matter how much i have on the throttle than how long I try.