Have a 2010 ford focus, recently did an oil change on it. Having trouble reading the dipstick.
This is a bit frustrating as I have been tinkering and fixing cars for years.
Normally if the car is parked overnight, no need to clean the dipstick, just pull it out and read it. Clean it off and try again, will get the same reading.
Not working on this Ford. Reading low (like add a quart low) when I first check the dipstick. Clean it, try again, and it is reading slightly over full.
Never have had this happen before and it makes no sense. Any thoughts?
Is the dipstick seating all the way down? Is the car parked on an un-level surface?
Is it a car made in the last 20 years? If you want to make the Focus seem good, try checking the oil in a 3.5 Nissan v6. The manufacturers seem to have lost the skills required to route a dipstick to a useful location.
Hmm. My 2012 Focus doesn’t seem to read accurately until a few hours after an oil change.
And this is why Korean cars rule. The dipstick is usually just the owner.
As for the topic, I got nothing.
Does it have a plastic handle/pull that is lose and sliding in and out of the handle?
Are you looking at both sides of the stick? A flat steel stick in a bent (by design) tube it will often only read right on one side, some will let you put it in backwards.
I have an off-the-wall thought for this problem could it possibly be pulling cold thick oil up into the tube and when you reinsert it you're going to have false reading?
My not looked at by me in a while '02 SVT back burner do I still care project has a rusted out dipstick tube that will most likely be a bitch to replace. I have never ever seen that in any car in my entire life spanning vehicles from the sixties until today having also grown up in the heavily salted wintertime north of Ireland. On that single indictment the Ford Focus should hang its head in shame. 
That’s a duratec, right? On the Ecoboost in my Focus (duratec derivative), you have to wait a while after shutting off the engine to get a useful reading on the dip stick, as it occupies one of the passages that drains oil back from the head to the crankcase.
In reply to nutherjrfan :
The dipstick tube in my '97 Expedition rusted through. So, maybe it's a Ford thing.
Argh! Tested again. Wiped and checked twice, slightly overfilled but same reading both times. I'll go with that. Thanks all.
