Comment Of The Day: How Much Oil WAS That? Edition

Kudos to our friend Adam from Gizmodo for cowboying up and admitting how he accidentally set fire to an old Volvo. Twice, in fact! These things happen.

Changing your oil can be hazardous. Just ask reader mkbruin, Atlas VP, he has a story for us all:

My brother comes in, "hey, there's a problem with my car. Can you look at it?"

keep in mind, my brother was once caught trying to unscrew a flathead screw using a Phillips screwdriver.

So I ask what happened. "The oil light came on, so I filled it. Now its running strange."

This is a 1988 Mazda 929, a brilliant car with a 3.0v6.

I turn the car on and the entire garage fills with smoke. I kill the engine immediately, and ask him how much oil he added. "Just a few bottles."

Put the 929 up on stands, grab a bucket, and drain. And drain. And drain. And drain. So I go to the trash can, where I dig out 10 empty quart bottles. I fill each of the 10, and only half the oil in the bucket is gone.

So I ask him again, how much oil did you put in... to which he responds "I filled it till I could see the oil". By that, he was referring to putting in oil until it came out the top of the engine.

We sold the car 2 years later with a blown head gasket. God I miss that car, it was amazing.

What a machine!

Contact the author at patrick@jalopnik.com.