Had a little mishap with my old banger (1988 Colt) the other day. Before setting off for a 120 mile journey I thought I'd check the oil. It was a bit low, so I topped it up to about halfway between min and max readings. I then set off.
About 5 miles into the journey it occurred to me that I didn't remember putting the oil filler cap back on. Stopped and checked, and indeed the cap wasn't on and oil had splashed out of the filler cap onto the air intake and other casings. Very luckily the cap had been trapped under the bonnet so I still had that. I replaced it and added some more oil because I didn't know how much I'd lost, and then finished the journey uneventfully.
Now I've managed to check the oil when cold and it seems it's substantially overfull. It's about half the distance from min to max above the max marker. So what to do?
To complicate matters, the car has a very slight head gasket leak so when parked it loses a drop of oil per night. It takes about 6 months to go from max to min at about 30 miles/week.
Is having this much oil going to cause damage, particularly to the head gasket seal? Is it better to drain it? I've got the 120 mile return journey on Monday so don't want to push it too much again. If draining it is advisable, is it something that can be done without putting the car on axle stands (I'm a bit of a novice at cars, as you might notice, though I've done a lot of maintenance of pushbikes)? Or better to take it somewhere to do it?
Thanks Theo