Extra dipstick???

[rpmerrill]

I was doing my first in depth familiarization on my Yanmar 4BY2-180. I already knew where the oil and tranny dipsticks were but I was going around the engine trying to identify other items like engine zincs, the various filters, pumps, etc. I came across another dipstick, looking like the other one, but way down low on the starboard side. I couldn't even see where it went.... maybe nowhere? I didn't pull on it. (I could barely reach it.) I decided to wait to see if the manual mentioned it anywhere. Nothin.

Any ideas?

 

[sheral]

I don’t have that engine but it may be the tube from the pan so you can extricate your oil...

 

[Hydraulicjump]

As it was explained to me, the Yanmar 4by2-180 is a marinized BMW diesel car engine. The dipstick on the starboard side is vestigial. The dipstick on the port side is added in the marinization. This may not be true, but a mechanic told me this and it sounded reasonable.

By the way, the same mechanic pointed out to me that on my boat the starboard dipstick reads a bit higher than the port side dipstick. For this reason, he said to visually calibrate when thinking about adding oil. My starboard dipstick will be dead in the middle while my port side stick will be at 1/4. He said to believe the starboard dipstick since it was the one BMW intended to be used.

Again, this may just be a bunch of hooey, but it made sense.

 

[LADYBUG TOO]

The 6BY2's have the same set up. What we found is that we needed to use the port side dip stick for oil removal. It seems that a quart or two remain when the starboard side stick is used. We also measure the amount we remove and then add the same amount back. We then check the fill level on the port side stick. Since we also change the oil filter we have to account for the oil retained in the old filter. It has worked since 2010 so I guess it must make sense.

Pat
Ladybug, Too