BarryC

I'm getting an oil overfill message on my '18 GT3 Touring. It's been 3 months and 700 miles since the last oil change and the lead tech at my local Porsche dealership is saying the problem is fuel vapor build up due to the car not being driven enough. Has anyone experienced this problem? I've had other GT3's and have not seen this before. The tech is saying I need to drive the car 100 miles (all at one time) to burn off the vapor.

Thoughts/suggestions?

Thx,
BC

GrantG

I think he means water vapor in the oil as a result of the combustion process and not running it up to high temperature enough to burn it off.

Lots of short dives will do this and a good flogging (after warming) should solve it.

lnirenberg

i call BS. My ‘14 has done this since I got it. Oil changes at a top end Independent Porsche shop precisely filled. Within the 1st few minutes of track time I get the message and believe me the moisture is getting aggressively burned off. I’ve given up and don’t pay attention. Unfortunately the new German car paradigm is no dipstick which is an obvious fix. I guess analog has no place in a digital world.

BarryC

Should have mentioned that the tech already had me drive for an hour on the interstate and I've bedded in a set of new pads/rotors so I've flogged the car pretty hard. This is why I have my doubts of what I'm being told.

GrantG

Well, the oil level indicator in these cars is notoriously finicky. Trakcar always recommends some Launch Control starts to set things straight (but he doesn't have a Manual)

I always keep my oil level at least one bar below full to avoid that message.

If it really bothers you, you can loosen the oil filter to spill out some oil (and some people have had success sucking some out with a siphon through the filler neck - don't try this with the motor running).

Jimmy-D

It is not Vapor Burn-off.

Bring it to another Dealer and have them take some oil out

tstafford

Unless there's been a change in the way the electronic dipstick works b/w the .1 and .2, I agree with this. My .1 RS did this all the time. Multiple oil changes, indy, dealer - happened all the time. Has also happened one time in my .2 but it actually went away after driving a couple hundred miles. IMHO the electronic dipstick is a piece of you know what. I don't trust the analog version in my 993 either but at least there's dipstick in that car that I can check from time to time. My advice - ignore it as long as it's the yellow warning.

evilfij

Fill it such that it is in the middle of the gauge. It is a dry sump so it does not like to be overfilled (or all the way full). My dealer fills to midpoint.

BarryC

ok - I solved my problem. I decided to try to siphon off some oil this morning and when I attempted to remove the oil fill cap, it was very difficult to take off. It turned ok but took a fair amount of pull to get it off. I attempted to put a tube in the fill tube but was unable to so no siphoning off of oil. Put the cap back on, started the motor and the overfill message was off and did not come back on during my drive to work. I've never seen anything like it though - it was like there was a vacuum buildup in the motor preventing the oil cap from coming off.

I will say that the problem started after I had the dealer install the ST ceramic brake conversion kit installed (car came with steel brakes). The front brake lines had to be changed since the CCB rotor is 30mm larger than the steel rotor. I don't see how bleeding the brakes could lead to an oil overfill error but maybe somehow it did? very weird...

kahane18

Hi

Just a quick thought, by opening the rear deck and removing the cap you are resetting the oil reading system and it will make the warning go away(ask me how I know...hahaha) When the engine is hot vacuum is created and it is hard to remove the oil cap.

I literally had the same issue with my car this week brought it to the shop took out some oil and filled it to the middle and no more problem....

Dont stress too much over this common pain in the a...issue.

Best

silvertige

This has happened to me 2X in the past 18 months of ownership. The digital dipsh#t, I mean dipstick, leaves much to be desired.

stephen k

I have had this same issue happen to me after my first oil change. Long story short your lead tech is wrong.

I've noticed that this electronic oil dipstick takes several readings throughout hundreds of miles and has a delay in letting you know if the vehicle is overfilled. I drove 500 miles before mine showed that it was overfilled. We siphoned out about 0.75 quarts and had the oil down to half a dipstick showing on the dash. I put about 0.4 quart back in and the reading showed about 7/8's full. I just left it there since I didn't want to overfill it once again. Porsche manual says 75% is where its optimal (im not sure the reasons why).

My thoughts are that if you overfill the oil 0.25 quarts, the car will freak out and bother you that you have overfilled the oil and the only way to fix this is to siphon out some oil.