Does anyone know how low the oil is when the light comes on? 1 quart?

I had the light come on last night - and it was only 500 since the last oil change. Since i was on the run i couldnt get a good reading from the stick so i added a quart and when i checked this morning it looks over filled.

I guess a followup question would be - how bad is it to run 1/2 quart over or so?

Thanks

 

:lurk:

 

Ouch. If I had the light come on after only 500 miles, I'd stop the car and make sure everything was ok! To lose that much oil so quickly, you might have had some kind of leak, maybe from the plug not being tight enough. Once the plug came out of my NSX one night in my driveway and all of the oil drained out. It had been changed at one of those quickie places and the plug wasn't tightened enough. It took 6 weeks to come out but happily enough, it came out in the driveway instead of while on the road.

I usually change the oil when the DIC is at 30% (about 4500-5000 miles in my case) and I never get the light between changes. My guess is that there was some malfunction of the light, but it needs to be checked out if it continues. I'm not sure when the light comes on, but I would think that anything before 2500 miles or so would be unusual. The car has almost 7 quarts, so even if you burned a quart every 1250 miles (which I don't), it would still only be low 2 quarts in 2500 miles.

The apparent reason that it is over-filled is that the light said it was low when it wasn't, you put in unneccessary oil, and now you have the opposite situation. It's a good example of why you should just check it before filling when something this unusual occurs.

Over-filling isn't good either, but I'm not sure that you have enough in there to cause a problem. Someone else will probably chime in and let you know about that.

Good luck. Keep track of the oil consumption for awhile. :cheers:

 

The manual recommends that you add an extra quart over full when you are running the car on a race track.

The extra oil won't hurt at all.

Is it possible that car was parked at an angle when the warning came up? Possibly the low oil sensor was exposed by the angle of the car.

If not, I agree, check for leaks, especially around the oil filter and oil drain plug.

Good luck,

Steve

 

Well, It came on yesturday morning..... I drove it for 30 minutes or so and parked it for a few minutes, got back in and it was still warning me.

Parked it at work - Came out and had to run again - drove it for over an hour and it kept warning me - even after i would dismiss it. Pressure seemed fine.

I finally put the oil in and the light still came on - so we went to the mall and left it parked for about 2 hours... i checked the oil when we came out and that is when i saw it was a little over filled.... the light did not come on again.

has not come on today either.....

That is why i was asking at what point does the light come on... 1 qt? 1/2 qt? just trying to rule out a bad sender.

 

Over a quart low ... somewhere between a quart and a quart and a half low from what I've seen.

Steve

 

You weren't parked on a slope were you ? I've had the warning come up even when parked on a gentle incline or cambered road even with the sump full. Even if you reset it the warning repeats itself every 5 minutes or so until the engine has been switched off and restarted with the sensor detecting enough oil in there. When the warning came up for me I waited until I had to pull up on the level at some traffic lights, switched off the engine and restarted when the lights went green - no more warnings.

 

I had it come on 1 time soon after my 1st oil change. Scared me silly. I was down almost 2 qts. That's when I found out I had an oil usage problem. Had a re-ring done.

 

Mine came on too since I am burnin goil with my heads. I think it is 1 1/2 to 2 quarts low. I put a quart in and it went up over the add mark.

 

The new C6 Z06 (2006) will have a dry sump setup which should prevent problems with high speed driving.

 

I parked on a steep hill at Roadamerica (nose down) and the light styed on through several ignition cycles. I checked the actual oil level several times and it was fine. I finally pulled the battery cable and left it for about an hour. It seems like the low oil warning takes a lot of ignition cycles to reset.

 

All though I can't say specificly on a LS1, in general it can be as bad as under filled. It can result in the same thing and that would be low oil pressure. This would be due to the crank throws foaming up the oil and you can imagine how hard it would be to get the pump to pump foam.
But as long as you press. gauge still is showing pressure , I'd say your OK,

You dont have to wait all that long for the oil to drain down before you can check it. a couple of minutes will do. Just the same as when you check your oil in a gas staion, you can check the oil while pumping your gas.

You dont have to add oil if it's not right at the full mark either. Taking it further, you should never add oil unless it is absolutly below the low mark. If you're thinking that it will probably be rare that it is right on the full mark, except right after an oil change, your right.

You say "it looks over filled" was it or not? Many times the oil level on the front of the stick looks higher than it does on the back side of the stick. If thats the case go by the reading on the back of the stick, it's the true reading. many times (depending on how long the engine has been sitting) the oil on the front of the stick is due to drain down and not an indicator of the oil in the pan. It's an old trick, but it's still good. :)

 

All though I can't say specificly on a LS1, in general it can be as bad as under filled. It can result in the same thing and that would be low oil pressure. This would be due to the crank throws foaming up the oil and you can imagine how hard it would be to get the pump to pump foam.
But as long as you press. gauge still is showing pressure , I'd say your OK,

You dont have to wait all that long for the oil to drain down before you can check it. a couple of minutes will do. Just the same as when you check your oil in a gas staion, you can check the oil while pumping your gas.

You dont have to add oil if it's not right at the full mark either. Taking it further, you should never add oil unless it is absolutly below the low mark. If you're thinking that except right after an oil change, it will probably be rare that it is right on the full mark, your right.

You say "it looks over filled" was it or not? Many times the oil level on the front of the stick looks higher than it does on the back side of the stick. If thats the case go by the reading on the back of the stick, it's the true reading. Often (depending on how long the engine has been sitting) the oil on the front of the stick is due to drain down and not an indicator of the oil in the pan. It's an old trick, but it's still good. :)

 

:nono: Some how my last reply to this post got sent twice. I apologize for that, I'm not aware of how I did that but I will be more careful in the future. :bb

 

If the low oil level light keeps coming on, the oil level is within operating range, and there are no signs of an oil leak, I would be checking the oil level sensor.
The sensor may be going bad and giving intemittent false readings.