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[Parity]

Just attended my first 12 hour Devil in the Dark but unfortunately we did not finish due to "engine failure". The car is a 1.6 that runs in SM and during practice motor felt healthy to me. First two drivers ran about 90 minutes each then came my stint which lasted about 2 hours. I ran until it burped for gas then came in hot. Motor still felt fine. Next driver does one lap and comes in blowing smoke. The dipstick was out of the tube . Crew installed dipstick but within 2-3 laps he was back with oil all over the engine bay and dipstick is out again. Driver said he was losing power quickly. Apparently when I pitted a volunteer crew member checked the oil and added about 3/4 of a quart because it looked low.  Obviously that was a mistake and I'm not sure why it was done. I understand why the dipstick would get blown out but should the car have lost power as well? Car did start up and sounded fine when they pulled it on the trailer. 

 

Again, he did 3-4 laps in this condition. Is it possible there is no damage, just a mess from excess oil? Owner will be doing leak down, etc to check engine condition but i'd like to know for my own curiosity.

[trimless]

Paul, I had a similar issue in a 24 hour chump car race. We were running a 94 in a race and I had filled the engine with Valvoline race synthetic which has a blue tint and extremely difficult to see on the dipstick. When we came in for the first pit stop the person checking oil could not read it and put in two quarts of oil.  The car ran but it felt like it had lost a lot of power so we came in to exchange drivers thinking doom was near, and I wanted  everyone to get laps.  Another quart of oil was added during this stop.  We ran the car one lap with over 7 quarts of oil in the engine before it started spewing out smoke.  Dip stick was not blown out on the engine.

 

Brought the car in, drained oil and replaced with proper amount. The car ran the remainder of the 24 hour race with no issues.  That same engine has run another 26 hours of endurance racing since then. Just this past weekend I ran it in an 8 hour NASA enduro and the car came in 1st overall.  So if anything that overfill we experienced has added life to our engine! Hope you see the same result.