orange oil light comes on when parked on a decline (nose down).

[Blau]

The oil meter has the oil level in the middle and says okay. To be safe, I added a liter. It's been a few months since my last oil change and I know that I do burn a little oil. When I did this the meter still registered halfway and okay. Shouldn't adding a liter move the meter? I tried going for a drive and then resetting. Still getting a halfway reading.


I likely need a new oil level sensor, I think, because of the reading when I park on an incline. Anyone have experience with this?

128i 140xxx miles .

[e4603]

Only way to be sure if you have too much or not enough oil is to drain it out and measure. But it’s about time for a new sensor.

[BikeNHV]

I had a very similar experience once, a bit over 2 years ago.

I parked on a very steep decline to jump start another car. Ended up taking forever because the other car was so dead, probably a half hour.

I stopped the jump because my low oil level warning came on. Got my car level again and it stayed on.
Drove about 1 mile and bought a quart of oil. Added it and came back to full, but really it should have been over-full.

At the time my car may have started slightly below full due to an active oil pan leak. But I had religiously kept it topped off.

I chalked it up to the wide variation/tolerance of the oil level sensor. Remember, it's an idiot light - BMW does not want it to be too sensitive to slight over/under fill as not to freak people out.

09 128i. At the time ~120k. Now 144k. No other anomalies with the oil level sensor since.

[tracer bullet]

Originally Posted by Blau

Shouldn't adding a liter move the meter?

I think our gauge is probably kind of dumb, on screen at least. It's a bit "yep, you're good, I don't want to give you details and freak you out in case you're not a car person".

I do wonder, but never tried, to see if some external software could get a "real" reading. But then again it'd be voltage or something and would have to kind of be calibrated. Not calibrated exactly but if you say knew your oil was totally drained, and you added the perfect amount afterwards, and were on level ground... that reading would be your new baseline. You could also stop a quart early, measure, pour a half quart in, measure again, pour the final half quart to get to perfect and then have a few points along the way so you knew what "a little low" meant.

Thinking out loud. Hopefully helpful.

[iamroddy]

The sensor is towards the rear of the oil pan...I suspect if you parked nose-up, that wouldn't happen. With it nose-down, the oil will naturally gravitate to the front, making the oil appear to be low when it is not.
You would have to be on a pretty extreme angle to uncover the oil pump pick-up and cause any real issues.