Mechanics on DU, advice needed. I think I have good news about my car.

[Maddy McCall]

My car died on the way to Crawford. We think that the engine is a goner, which would cost me a couple thou' to replace. We towed it home from near Dallas yesterday.

More to the story. My father took my car to the mechanic today, and he checked the oil first. He said that it appears that the Quick Lube place that changed the oil put twice as much oil in it as necessary.

My dad didn't push his mechanic with more questions, as they discussed other possible scenarios, but Dad said that the oil thing stuck in his mind.

So, when he got home, he called his very good friend who owns a dealership, and his friend told him that too much oil can be just about as bad as not enough. He said that it could indeed cause the engine to lock up. He advised Dad to have the owner of the Quick Lube place go to my car tomorrow and see that the oil level is twice as high as it should be, just so there's no question about it.

I do still have the receipt for the oil change.

I wonder if the Quick Lube owner (or his insurance) is going to be paying for my new motor.

Opinions and advice needed.

[tk2kewl]

1. if you had twice as much oil the crankshaft can beat it into a frothy mess

that wont pump properly and then you get the same result as having no oil

[Maddy McCall]

4. I hate that my motor is gone...

but this is good news, because it may place the Quick Lube guy in the predicament of having to replace my engine.

It appears that he didn't even drain my old oil before adding the new.

How difficult do you think it will be to get him to pay for the new engine?

[tk2kewl]

10. it might be tough... I can't say I know of anyone who has ever gotten

a mechanic to pay for damage they caused. My brother had an engine ruined by a mechanic that screwed up and he was left holding the bag. I think he got back the money he paid for the "repair" that destroyed his car, if i remember.

[Demonaut]

22. well Discount Tire replaced the radiator on my Porsche when they

tried to use it to lift my car, the damage was apparent immediately though

[tk2kewl]

45. Brilliant plan. Lift the car by the radiator!

:rofl:

[The Traveler]

2. Overfilling can cause froth

Air whipped into the oil, which interferes with the smooth flow of lubrication. Yeah, it CAN fuck up your main bearings. It sounds like they might have added the new oil without draining the old oil, in which case your filter didn't get changed either. Check your filter and see if it is nasty. If so .. case solved. They owe you an engine.

[Maddy McCall]

7. The filter sits higher than the oil pan in my car.

Even if they changed the filter, all of the old oil wouldn't have drained. I haven't checked the filter yet...I hope the mechanic will do that tomorrow.

But the oil is black...I just had it changed on the 12th. And it's up an inch higher on the stick than it should be.

Do you think it will be difficult to get them to pay for the engine?

[The Traveler]

33. Well, that's true in all cars I've worked on.

But mechanics sometimes forget to change the filter after draining ... but rarely the other way around. Why? Partly because the stuff "clings" ... and when you forget to drain it, you get a lot more mess when you pop the filter off. Draining it helps the clinging stuff flow down into the pan, so you get less mess. (When you drain, the filler cap and drain plug are both removed, and the resultant flow pulls the clinging higher oil down as the pan oil drain. Suction, basically.) Still, it could happen.

But if the filter is dirty on the inside, then it is an old filter ... which really tends to indicate the draining procedure was not followed. Coupled with the overfilled situation, and the fact that the oil is already dark, that really supports the view that they just added oil and were really, really, negligent.

And, yeah, if they fucked up your car, they are liable. BUT DO NOT PULL THE FILTER TO CHECK IT BEFORE DUDE HAS COME OUT TO CHECK YOUR OIL LEVEL!
In fact, I would do it while he was there.

[Maddy McCall]

35. Thank you SO MUCH, Traveler.

Your advice is invaluable. I am going to print out this thread and give it to my father so that he will have it when he goes to the mechanic's tomorrow.

You might get a kick out of this. How will I get this to my father? I'm going to ride my son's Yamaha 80 the five miles to my parents. From the country into town. With your post in my pocket. :D

:yourock: Thanks so much!

[GOPisEvil]

3. Too much = VERY bad.

You bet your ass I'd be down there at the quick lube place first thing in the am. I think they owe you a new engine.

[Maddy McCall]

9. The mechanic is not going to drain the oil until the owner of the...

Quick Lube has a chance to come see for himself. He's not doing any work to the car until the Quick Lube guy gets there.

You bet your ass that I will fight for a new engine for my car. :hi:

[GOPisEvil]

11. Give 'em hell!

:D

[Maddy McCall]

13. My dad is a very mild mannered man.

Christian deacon and all that. But you don't want to piss him off. If he thinks that I'm getting snubbed, his paternalist bone will kick in and he'll latch onto them like a pitbull and won't give up until he's shaken the money out of them.

I'm so glad to have the dad I have. :)

[GOPisEvil]

14. Heck...there might not be much left when YOU'RE done with them!

:7

[Maddy McCall]

16. Well, the owner might just take me for an irrational woman...

all bark, no bite. That's the way some southern guys are. But if I can't get through to him, Pops will. :D

[GOPisEvil]

20. Hey Quick Lube Guy....RUN!!!!!!!

:D

[The Traveler]

34. Make it clear

you have several biker motorhead friends with pony tails down to their ass and much bar brawling experience and who get real pissed off when assholes try to exploit women through their cars. :evilgrin:

[Maddy McCall]

36. LOL! I'll certainly do that.

If the lawyer doesn't get 'im, my mechanic friends at DU will.

:hug:

[nookiemonster]

5. Deleted

n/t

[Lone_Star_Dem]

6. If you can prove that they did this

It could be the reason the vehicle died. They then would be responsible for it.

Does your receipt show how many quarts of oil they put in by any chance?

[Maddy McCall]

12. Oh yeah, it shows it, as well as all the other work that they...

DID NOT perform. It took them 10 minutes to "change" the oil. The receipt shows that they did everything from checking my air filter to checking my wipers. They did NONE of that.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

27. You have a mechanic saying it has too much oil

You have proof that they were the ones who did it. Worst case scenario all you'll have to do is get the mechanic to give a statement that it caused the engine failure. I think the lube place will be willing to work with you on this one.

Did you see the oil light come on at any point? Not that they are too reliable, but it would help to prove your point if you did.

[Maddy McCall]

30. No. It never came on. There was no warning. The car didn't run hot.

We were tooling along down the highway, and then there was a sound like flap flap flap and then nothing. The car died.

[jim3775]

8. Those quick lube places are hardly the height of automotive expertise

I remember years ago when i was about 12 my mother got an oil change at a jiffy lube, i guess they screwed up and spilled a whole bunch of oil all over the engine block and didn't bother to tell us. Of course the next day the there was black smoke coming out from under the hood. It didn't really do any damage but thankfully my uncle is a mechanic so he scrubbed it all out.

[Maddy McCall]

15. I don't think I'll be using them again.

[punpirate]

17. I ran into this frequently...

... but mostly from owners who did their own work. Truthfully, I never did see any engine fail mechanically because of too much oil. What usually happened--if the engine was driven hard enough--was that either the front or rear crankshaft seal was pushed out of place, which then allowed all the oil to be pumped out and then the engine failed from lack of oil.

If the engine still runs, you may be able to revive it by changing the oil and filter and replacing the oil with the correct amount of fresh oil. Then, replace the spark plugs. The reason for the latter is that a lot of that extra oil will go up the oil drains into the valve cover and then get forced down the valve guides, and will introduce a lot of oil into the combustion chambers--some of which will end up on the spark plug ends. Some of that extra oil will also get pushed through the PCV system and end up in the combustion chamber that way.

Before you decide to throw the car and/or engine away, try what I suggest above. It's cheap and it will tell you if there's further damage. One thing for sure, you can't diagnose the condition of the engine when it's got that much oil in it.

Verify first that the Quick Lube shop made a mistake, and then try what I suggest.

Cheers.

[Maddy McCall]

19. Thanks so much, punpirate!

You MUST be a mechanic. :D

That's the next step that my mechanic mentioned to my dad, after they get the Quick Lube guy there to see that he put too much oil in the engine.

The next step is indeed to do all of the things you mentioned.

I wasn't driving the car hard when it quit. I was doing the speed limit. Don't know if that info matters, but it's the truth.

[punpirate]

23. Well, yeah...

... in another life, I held a master mechanic's license.

Cheers.

[Redstone]

24. Good advice. I also am surprised that the extra oil

didn't blow any seals in her engine.

Which leads me to tell an irresistible joke:

An Eskimo was driving up the highway in the Arctic when his engine began emitting clouds of smoke, then stopped dead. He called the Inuit AAA, and when the tow truck arrived, the mechanic looked under the hood of the car for a minute, then walked over to the driver's side of the car and said to the Eskimo, "well, it looks to me like you've blown a seal."

The Eskimo quickly covered the lower part of his face with his hand and mumbled, "Err, um, no, that's just some frost on my moustache."

Redstone

[punpirate]

25. The way I first heard it was...

... "no, no, that's ice cream." :)

I should add, on edit, that the best ones were early Toyota Tercel owners who did their own oil changes. On the early sedans, the engine was longitudinally-mounted ahead of the transaxle, with an over-and-under transfer gear case. So, when the amateur mechanic looked under the car, the lowest drain plug was for the front on the transmission.

So, they would drain all of the gear oil out of the transmission and put 4-1/2 more quarts of oil in the engine. In a fairly short time, the car would come in on the hook with transmission failure, and the owner would be screaming about it, wanting it replaced under warranty. I would ask, "did you just change the oil?"

"Yeah, so what, it's the transmission's that bad."

So, I'd tell the customer, "I'll make you a bet, okay? If I pull the dipstick and find nine quarts of oil in the engine, and then pull the transmission drain plug and get nothing but a bad smell, you buy a new transmission."

"Nah, can't be. My son's a good mechanic. He knows what he doing."

And, I would pull the dipstick and there would be nine quarts of oil in the engine. Invariably.

Cheers.

[Redstone]

29. Yeeowch! Smokin' tranny!

Sounds like Toyota had themselves what you'd call a design flaw with that one.

Not that it'd excuse someone not wondering why the "engine oil" they'd just drained out was bright red instead of muddy brown (if I remember right, not having had much experience with automatics, since I prefer to row my own).

Redstone

[punpirate]

37. The manual transmissions...

... were what I was speaking of (in fact, the automatics had two different fluids--gear oil in front, automatic trans fluid in the rear--as I recall). And one can't miss the smell of burned gear oil. Very distinctive. Usually burned up the transfer gears, which made it cheaper to replace the transmission than to replace the dusted parts and rebuild.

But, it wasn't really a design flaw. It never happened in the shop--just to customers who were not too swift. The engine drain plug wasn't hidden. It was just higher from the ground than the drain plug for the trans.

Now, the one that was close to a design flaw was the design of the oil filter. The Toyota filters used a round o-ring to seal to the block face, which was lightly crimped in place. So, if the filter had gone quite a few thousand miles, when the filter was removed, the o-ring would stick to the block. The factory manuals would always say, "check that the sealing surface is clean," and everyone in the shop would know to check the block to see if the o-ring had stuck in place.

But, the average shade-tree mechanic wouldn't check, and would install a new filter with the old o-ring in place. It would run, and wouldn't leak--until one was on the open road at speed and the oil pressure at its peak. Then the extra o-ring would be dislodged and all the oil would be pumped out of the engine in about 10-15 seconds. By the time the owner noticed the oil warning lamp lighting, the engine would seize. I did between eight and ten engines a year because of that. Fortunately, there would always be evidence--the extra o-ring hanging there, or the filter completely missing.

Funny thing, though. The engines were so good that there was minimal damage. I would hone the cylinders, polish the crank journals, clean out the engine, replace the rings and the crank bearings and put it back in. Never had one come back.

Cheers.

[Maddy McCall]

38. I wish you guys would form a mechanic's group at DU.

I love reading these stories. It would be a cool group where those of you who are mechanics could dispense wisdom and laugh at the dumb things that those of us who aren't mechanics do.

[punpirate]

39. Oh, I never laugh at the people who aren't mechanics...

... but, I do get a chuckle, every once in a while, out of those who think they are, but aren't. :)

My favorite in that regard was Leif Erickson, the actor who was once married to Frances Farmer, who once brought me a Honda Civic, on which he and his son had butchered up the engine trying to fix it. He was somewhat apologetic, but he couldn't help but question just about everything I did to fix the car.

I was the model of restraint. I tried to divert him by mentioning bit acting jobs he'd had (I think I mentioned a then-recent two-parter of "The Rockford Files" he'd been in), but by the end of the job, I was very close to asking, "so, Leif, tell me what life was like with Frances."

But, I didn't. :)

[Maddy McCall]

40. I'm even more convinced that you all need a group, now.

That's hilarious!

Here's a funny story. My friends had one of those small Geo Metros about 15 years ago. They stopped to gas it up in Florida, and let their nephew, who was about 16, handle the fueling of the car. Well, he put diesel in instead of gasoline. Need I say more?

:D

[punpirate]

41. Bet it sounded like it was running on...

... three cylinders. :) (That's an inside joke. :) )

[Maddy McCall]

42. I don't understand the joke...

but I know that you know that the kid fucked up. I really felt sad for the little red-haired guy (he wasn't "all there"). He was basically disowned by his uncle, sadly.

LOL.

[punpirate]

43. The Geo Metros have...

... a three-cylinder engine. :)

[Maddy McCall]

44. OOOOOh.

Well, I have a Pontiac. It has the best leather seats in the world. That's one reason I hated for it to die. It felt like I was driving, sitting in a leather recliner...so damned comfortable.

[merh]

18. Hmmmm, very interesting.

I see ginger ale, water, fresh ham and baked potatos have a healing effect!

Check you pmail!

:hug:

[Maddy McCall]

21. I feel SO MUCH better.

But I'm still too lazy to clear out the luggage and put everything that was in my trunk in the proper place. All of it is sitting in the middle of my den floor.

But that baked potato. Lord, it was heaven. I put almost a whole stick of butter on it and covered it in salt and pepper. It was a huge spud. Had hardly any room left for the ham. (Which was also delicious. Am having fried ham and biscuits for breakfast. :P )

Checking pm right now. :pals:

[merh]

26. Don't fool with the luggage until tomorrow.

You need to recharge. That heat exhaustion messed with your body and it has to heal!

:pals: Just take it easy. :hug:

[Maddy McCall]

28. I'm not going to. I'm going to take a shower in a bit...

and I'll just dig my nightshirt out of the luggage, and leave it be.

Thanks so much for that PM. This whole thing just might work out ok, after all.

:hug: :hug: :loveya: :hug: :hug:

[KitchenWitch]

31. They will likely pay for parts and not labor

Something similar happened to my dad at a quick lube place and they just paid for the new engine. All labor charges had to be paid by my dad.

[Maddy McCall]

32. Well that sucks.

But I guess it's better than nothing. Thanks for telling me about your dad's experience.