1995 Volvo 850 wagon 2.4. Three miles from house oil light came on. One mile from home oil pouring out from under car. Pulled over immediately. Only doing 20 mph after light came on so didn't notice lack of compression until stopped car. First Volvo and don't have many ideas. No water in oil. Maybe separator? Old, fat, and crazy and need all the help I can get. Thanks. P.S.-Had to use flat bed wrecker to get home.

 

Probably Blew out a main seal or the PCV system took a dump????
Can you see where it started?

Wait for the experts to get on.....

 

Haven't had the nerve to try to restart it yet. Waiting for son to come over to look while I turn ignition key. Hoping PCV system. What all besides funny looking hose I saw in one of the threads?

 

Where was the oil coming from? Probably from the dipstick, if so, then probably a PCV system. Like I've mentioned several times already, but I just did my PCV system. Had similar issues, blew oil out of dipstick once and had a little bit of smoke coming out from the dipstick.

Either the oil trap is bad or it is not uncommon for one of the hoses to become clogged, so if it is the pcv system, replace the oil trap, like 35 bucks, and take out and clean all associated hoses, or replace whole system, about 100 bucks.

 

So if it was coming from dipstick and was oil trap, what is oil trap? Is it cylinder by right front headlight? And check out hoses of course. Possible oil cap seal? I deliver car parts for Ron Craft Chevy in Baytown Tx but I just deliver, know very little about mechanics.

 

The oil trap is located underneath the intake manifold, so to get to it you need to take off the intake manifold. A lot easier than it sounds, so don't worry. Here is a link that explains better than I ever would be able to as what the oil trap does and how to replace one.

http://www.lakesidedp.com/uploadpics/pcv/

 

Just one more question. Five miles from home, just before the oil light came on, the temp started to go up, so I stopped and added half gallon of water and saw no sign of oil leakage. Could 2 quarts of oil (or more) shoot out the dipstick that fast? Checked street and seems massive dump started maybe 100 feet from where I got stopped.

 

That would sound more like an oil line or something blew. Did you look underneath your car at all to see where the leak appeared to be coming from?

 

Really low to ground and no one here to help if car drops, plus almost 100 degrees outside in shade. Waiting for son to arrive to jack up and check and try to start the car. I really appreciate the help, Gilber, I'm not good at diagnostics. Can do the work for repairs but can't figure out what's wrong myself most of time and if I jump in blind it usually costs more to fix what I "fixed" first.

 

There are a couple oil lines that I had just recently replaced towards the front of the car that were leaking fairly bad, did you have any prior leaks to this, like puddles under your car?

I would jack it up, see if there's an obvious spot where the oil came from. I know the PCV system can cause backed up pressure in the crank case and cause oil to shoot out the dip stick, but you said there was a large oil dump. I'm not sure if a clogged PCV system is capable of that.

And no problem.

 

Just bought the car and just 45-50 miles on it when blew but drove it short distances a couple of times and saw no oil puddles or water puddles not explained by a/c

 

Either an oil line just gave way or the PCV system is just shot. Jack it up and see if there's any sign of leak underneath the car, if there is no sign of a blown or cracked hose of some kind, I would guess it would be PCV system then .

 

You only drove the car 45-50 miles since you bought it? I would be taking it back to where I got it if I was you.

 

Used car lot. Purchased "as is". Got it Saturday night just before closing time. Got 5 miles down the road and overheated so to be on safe side had it sent home on a flatbed wrecker because that's what the book says use. He was already gone and wouldn't answer my calls. 44 miles to lot and no way to get there. Replaced thermostat and seemed to stop overheating for awhile. Suddenly got extremely hot so pulled over and let cool down. Made it to within a mile of home and had to have it flatbeded the rest of the way. There it sits.

 

X2 - You bought what you thought was a running car. As-is means no warantee, not misrepresented.

PCV doesn't go from working to totally plugged. If the PCV system caused the oil to blow, it was blowing oil before you bought it.

The overheating sounds like a head gasket. Check the oil & coolant for contamination. I wouldn't be surprised if the car wasn't running hot, too, before you bought it.

Remind the salesman about the internet. Tell him you're very active on Volvo forums. Try to approach as pleasantly as you can as you're trying to get him to do something he really doesn't want to do.

 

Take it back, especially if you purchased it from any sort of dealer. They need to fix it.

I would have test drove it pretty hard. I usually let them run 20 or 30 minutes, take it down the road and try to blow it up. If it makes it through that, I usually decide to buy it.

 

+1 what rspi said.any time you are buying a used car you want to test drive it like if you're at the nextel cup race.

 

I can tell you I have sold a million cars "As is" and if someone brought it back with in 48 hrs of purchase, I always had a tech on the lot look the car over again in case the "pre-delivery inspection" missed anything. I would take the car back and have them deal with it... I would take no for an answer! Be nice about it, but don't let them take you for a ride! Let us know what you end up doing....

 

will do