Many many years ago a mate at work had a call from his elderly mother.
She rang to say that she had filled the engine in her Mini with water. She had experienced a 'senior moment' & mistaken the cap on the rocker cover for the radiator cap but realised her mistake when the water reached the rocker arms, what should she do?

The finished up for the day & went home, drained the engine, filled it with light oil & some kero, then started it & let it idle for a bit, then drained it again.

After refilling it with clean oil, & changing the filter for the second time that afternoon, he went for a longish low speed drive. Any remaining water was heated by the engine & the vapour was drawn off by the PCV system.
The car served faithfully for another five years when it was eventually traded on a newer model.

At least she realised the error & took immediate steps to fix the problem without causing any more harm.

these stories are all too common.
we had a fella at work fill a diesel landcruiser with oil to the top of the rocker cover.

when it started to rev its nuts off, and he couldnt stop it with the key (oil pushing past the rings i suspect), he drove it into a wall to stop the car and stall it out. After wrecking the bar work and blocking the decline for about an hour, he promptly had his lv ticket stripped pending investigation and retraining.

There was that reality TV series a few years ago call Worst drivers or something. Pommy show where there was about 5 pairs of poeple and they had to complete a series of tasks such as reverse park, check the oil etc. That was painful to watch.

hhmm sounds like one of the perth boys i know

oh is that were i always go wrong! i know someone that toped the water up with oil... lucky it was the washer bottle not the rad overflow one.

Some people should just not be allowed near motor vehicles..

I remember a young lady coming into our workshop after she had topped up her oil and wondering why it was smoking and leaking so much??
Turned out she had poured in oil until she could see it in the rocker cover hole..

was scanning some forums and came across this about a mustang driver this is wat it reads:

My car was idling like crap the other day so I figured since I just got it, it may have been awhile since anyone changed the oil out. I decided to go ahead and change the oil. I used Mobile 1 synthentic oil like I was ...reccomended on here. Anyways, I drain out the oil and noticed it was extremely dark and even after 10 minutes of draining, it was still coming out. I decided to go ahead and flush it to make sure all the bad stuff got out. I hooked up the hose, ran water through the engine, started it up and was waiting for the water to come out clean (The engine never went above idle so I was told this would be ok). Anyways, About 3 minutes into this, then engine starts shaking and shuts off. I figured it was all cleaned out so I plugged it up, added the oil and figured I was ready to go. WRONG! The car won't freaking start now. This car has been nothing but trouble for me, I think I am done with it.


FAIL