996 Carrera oil level gauge - What is each increment? - Page 1 - 911/Carrera GT - PistonHeads UK

I've had my Carrera 4 for about 3 weeks now and driven it c500 miles in that time. It has now dropped 1 bar on the oil level gauge (confirmed after standing cold for several days), but i couldn't easily find what each increment was worth in volume terms. Can anyone advise as a search seemed to turn up talk of failing or fluctuating gauges? If the whole thing was a litre I wouldn't be that worried as there are 8 of them. If each were 0.5L alone then different story.

About 200ml per segment.

Thanks, that's really helpful (and a very quick reply!). So 1L per 2,500 miles then. I'll jsut keep and eye and not worry about that too soon. I know it has been moaned about it many threads, but the electronic gauge is rather irritating. For a consistent reading I just go for cold and left standing for a few days. Seems to take a while for all the oil to drain back to the sump as I'd shown 2 bars down a couple of hours after i last used the car and while hot from 50 miles of motorway travel it was showing 4 down. Did i read somewhere some 996 Carreras will have a dipstick too?

m444ttb said: Thanks, that's really helpful (and a very quick reply!). So 1L per 2,500 miles then. I'll jsut keep and eye and not worry about that too soon. I know it has been moaned about it many threads, but the electronic gauge is rather irritating. For a consistent reading I just go for cold and left standing for a few days. Seems to take a while for all the oil to drain back to the sump as I'd shown 2 bars down a couple of hours after i last used the car and while hot from 50 miles of motorway travel it was showing 4 down. Did i read somewhere some 996 Carreras will have a dipstick too? My 2001 3.4 has a dipstick, not the easiest thing to read mind.

It wouldnt surprise me if it's only the 3.4 car that have it. It's the sort of useful Porsche might get rid of when they tinkered with the engine for the 996.2 :-/

996.2 has it as well. It may not have actually used 200ml, if it was only just into the segment when you bought the car, it may only have lost a small amount, just enough to drop in onto the segment below. You need to wait ntil it has dropped a few segments to propoerly assess oil usage.

My 996 facelift cars had the dipstick. Wait until you go 997. No dipstick and you check it with the engine warm and idling.

Yep dipstick found! When this car inevitably needs a rebuild the chances of me ever going 997 will be much reduced. Unless the market has really gone bonkers and 996 Carreras are now worth £30k+ lol

m444ttb said: I've had my Carrera 4 for about 3 weeks now and driven it c500 miles in that time. It has now dropped 1 bar on the oil level gauge (confirmed after standing cold for several days), but i couldn't easily find what each increment was worth in volume terms. Can anyone advise as a search seemed to turn up talk of failing or fluctuating gauges? If the whole thing was a litre I wouldn't be that worried as there are 8 of them. If each were 0.5L alone then different story. If the oil level is 1 bar below the max line when dead cold and after sitting a while the chances are the oil was overfilled before. The oil expands when hot and that one bar down will turn into at least the oil level being at the max line when the engine is fully up to operating temperature depending upon how cold it is where you are. In fact where I live and drive even if the temperature is down to the low 50's at night the level is down 2 bars from where it would be hot when I check the oil level first thing before starting the engine. BTW, the difference in the oil level at the min line vs. the max line should be in the owners manual. I have spoken to techs about failing oil level systems and the word I get is failure is rare. The one failure the techs could recall was a system that provided no reading at all. If the reading is variable and this can't be explained by not having the car on level ground or by in some other way being inconsistent with when the reading is taken this possibly could be a bad sensor. I say this based on having cut apart an oil level sensor and knowing a bit about how it works and is put together. BTW, the sensor is confirmed to be operating properly every oil change -- *if* the oil change is done correctly -- as the proper oil change/refill procedure has the engine up to some min. temperature, has the car level, the oil drained a specific amount of time, then a specific amount of oil added to the engine. Then the oil level is checked by the electronic system and the reading it provides is confirmed to be the right reading based on the known/correct amount of oil that was added to the engine.

I had a suspicion it was overfilled so you could be correct. This morning I managed to park on a slight slope after 20 mins running and produce a 1 bar reading! That one I knew was wrong. I've decided I'm going to get a major service carried out either by a local specialist or Swindon OPC as the last service was done by the garage that sold me the car. While they deal in a lot of 911s I doubt they have any huge specialist knowledge.