Engine Oil

OY VEY !!!

Imagine this:
You have a 10 inch tall glass (this is your engine block) filled with Coke up to a height of 4 inches (this is the MAX mark on your dipstick).
However your straw (this is your dipstick) is only 8 inches long.
When you fully insert the straw, you have access to only 2 inches of Coke which you can drink (measure), even though there are still 2 inches of Coke left in your glass. But, you cannot reach/drink/measure those 2 inches left.

The gist is that your engine oil dipstick is not designed to reach all the way to the bottom of the oil pan. This way, when you pull a dipstick out, and it is dry, that does not mean you have no oil left in the engine/oil pan. Just that you do not have ENOUGH oil for the dipstick to measure.

I concur. OY VEY !!!

JTA, you need to unlearn what you think you know. Your engine can still have oil in it even though it doesn’t register on the dip stick. Maybe this crude picture will help.

The lack of oil on your dip stick doesn’t mean the oil pan is empty. It simply means it is lower than the dip stick.