Increased running temperature

[piscean57]

My car had an oil service on Thursday.

Since then I have noticed that it was slightly overfilled so that the oil on the dipstick is above Max by about 3/4 of the distance between Min and Max. I guess this is about 1/2 litre and have been told by two informed people that this is not a significant overfill.

However since then the running temperature of the oil under normal driving conditions has increased from 90deg to 100deg. I know my car well and in snow or heatwave it drives at 90 degrees unless it is given some boot. If I now drive it at about 60mph the oil temperature drops back to about 90deg. Can anyone suggest what might be the problem as the garage who did this are telling me that a) it is nothing to worry about and b) it is nothing they have done during an oil service.

:confused:

[westside]

drain the oil to the correct level maybe your first point of call

[piscean57]

Missed from the original post that the garage told me that the viscous coupling on the engine fan was a bit worn, which they discovered by turning it by hand.

As far as I know these either work or they fail, so I am wondering if they may have wobbled it about a bit to "test" and thats the reason for the increased heat?

[piscean57]

I thought there would have been a bit more of a response and advice to this!

Anyway I have just been to the local indy and had just over 1/2 litre of oil sucked out via the dipstick tube - 2 minute job and no mess!

http://i637.photobucket.com/albums/uu96/piscean57/Photo-0222.jpg

They also checked the viscous fan and it is worn, so I will get it replaced as soon as possible. Whether this is the cause of the sudden increased temperature I don't know, as the aircon fan is designed to provide cooling if the main fan were to fail and I have the aircon on permanently - unless I feel the need to get evrey last bhp out of the car!

I can't see that the additional oil would have caused the raised temperature but havent had time to drive it any distance since to check.

[westside]

let us know if that has solved the issue :-) I forgot to reply to this earlier, thoses oil sucking things are wicked :-)

[piscean57]

Ok, so here's the update.

Now that the excess oil has been removed, has that affected the oil temperature? The answer is "yes, slightly". Everytime I drove it from Thursday night after the oil change until yesterday afternoon whilst still overfilled the temp sat at 100 degrees (the needle covered the 100 mark) in normal driving - I wasn't going to give it a spirited drive. Since yesterday afternoon when the excess was drained, everytime I have driven it the needle is slightly to the left of 100 so that I can actually see the 100 mark. Getting it up to about 50ish reduces the temperature more than it had before as, I assume, it makes the fan pull more air in.

Before the oil service I had no reason to think that the fan was a problem but now I have seen with my own eyes that this is the case I can see that this is contributing in some way to the increase in temperature.

I am still in communication with the garage who did the service and, at present, am not going to name them but they are VERY well known. However it will interest you all to know that it was left to me to go to my local indy to get the oil drained.

[Black Sabbath]

Thats poor service to be overfilling oil imo.Seems strange that it is running hotter though because of it :confused: ,keep us informed though Ian :)