Just as a word to the wise, I'd really suggest that you make your daughter sit down and RTFM (Read The Friendly Manual). That exercise will keep her out of a world of trouble in her life.
Shipo - looks like a Dodge 3.3L V6 (or, maybe the 3.8L) used in the minivans. Which head gasket let loose first - the front one? If so, most likely at the rear of the head (right-hand side of the picture) - just a guess based on experience.
You are lucky that I am not the judge. I would rule this 95 % your daughters fault and 5 % Walmarts fault. The "authority figure" argument may be valid, however, you just stated that your daughter is going to a tech school. Unless that's fingernail technology, I would start working on another way to rip off big business or better yet, chalk it up to experience and eat the cost as you should.
Regarding which head gasket let loose, at this point I'm not convinced that either of them did. I swapped the gaskets as an attempt to cure a slow coolant leak into the oil (never a good thing). After the gasket replacement my fuel mileage went up a bit (not too surprising I guess), however, the rate of coolant loss doesn't seem to have changed much if at all. I have since found out that the timing chain cover has a coolant cross over, and apparently the gasket at the cross over points can be problematic. Grrr. If I'd known I would have done the timing cover gasket at the same time. :sick:
Nope didn't bother. I opened the valves for a quick look-see and even under magnification I could see no tracking or spotting what-so-ever. I simply cleaned up the gasket faces and slapped the heads back on. ;-)
Interestingly enough, the day I got the van back together I left on a 2,000 mile road trip. On the way out I noticed that my fuel economy was rivaling the best that van had ever delivered (mid 25s via the trip computer) and I wasn't exactly taking it easy. On the way home I decided to take it easy by keeping the speed in the 67 mph range and managed to go from Adair, MI to Albany, NY on a single tank of gas, a distance of 504 miles. When I filled up in Albany the trip computer was registering an astounding (for a 3.8 liter minivan) 28.2 mpg. Not too shabby. ;-)
I cannot remember the last time I heard of someone needing a valve job on a late model car. What with the advances in anti-knock formulations of modern unleaded fuel working in concert with the hardened valve seats and valve faces that started becoming standard fare in the mid 1970s, it does indeed seem as you so eloquently put it, that "valve jobs have gone the way of the carburetor."
Still, I'm thinking, hardened seats or not, that is a LOT of miles on a valve train. The heads are already off, what a great time for a machine shop to take a quick look at them!
Oh, nevermind....I remember the last mechine shop closed their doors in 1987. They sold their Sioux valve machine and hard seat grinder for scrap metal.
The boring bar is still sitting in the alley in back of the boarded up machine shop.
First off to you iselhondas, I don't think that as the engine noise increased somewhat that she continued to think it was her tires. I'll have to ask her about that. I do think that because she had never had her own car, and I always intercept or take care of problems with family cars, she didn't understand how serious this could be. Since it all started with the servicing at Walmart, I'm sure if I ask her she (with backward logic and naivety) is going to think that the sounds had to do with getting new oil in the engine.
Bottom line, I must not let the issue be switched to my daughter's mechanical ignorance and poor judgment. She could go to the grave with that and with her old engine serving her well for many years. The issue is not with my daughter, the issue the ruined the engine is that a Walmart tech made some mistake.
And Chuckboy, you make some good points... I never thought about going to the Attorney's General office. I'm not quite sure how to do that... perhaps over the Internet. And I got a bang out of your Paul Harvey ending ;-)
Walmart's claim department has already said they will not help us out in any way. One reason that I am going to small claims court is because it will cost me little and will cost Walmart at least the price of the engine. Also I am very well known in my area because of public speaking and I am an author with another book to be released in 2008 by a large publisher. At least in our area, it won't work using me as an example to detour others... and then at that, what are they detouring people from? Are they trying to stop people from not paying for Walmart's mistakes by delivering the full brunt of their corporate muscle? Thanks again folks...
Yeah, before I even took the heads off I snooped around for a machine shop that could pressure test and face the aluminum heads on that engine. I finally managed to find one down in Boston, and on the phone they had a bad attitude and informed me of rather high prices. Once the heads were off and I saw first hand the condition of the valve seats and faces I decided it would be silly to have them touched. The fuel economy that I've been getting since then seems to validate that decision. ;-)
Regarding being a dinosaur, yeah, me too. The last time I had the heads done on one of my cars was in the late 1970s. The "Valve Job" included a complete disassembly and cleaning of the heads, facing the valves (both new and old) and seats, knurling the valve guides, adding Perfect Circle valve stem seals, testing the spring tension (and replacing a few where necessary) and reassembly for something like $25 per V8 head plus parts. I kinda doubt I could find a place to do a V6 head with as much attention to detail for ten times the cost these days. :-/
This was a long time ago (8-10 years ago) and I have forgotten exactly what I did. But for starters, I would get the number of the Attourney General's Office and the Better Buisness Bureau off of the web and call them. I do remember that the people I spoke to in these offices were extremely helpful (must be a side effect of living in the midwest) and they gathered most of the data for me and all I had to do was pick it up and sort through it. It was easy because I live in the capital of my state, so the offices were minutes away. You may be able to get them to scan the documents and e-mail them to you. State workers can be very helpful if you are nice to them. If you are surly, they can turn into DOT workers in a heartbeat.
I have found that if you tell your story honestly to the AG and BBB, they will bend over backwards to help. It also helps if they have had several similiar complaints from the same location. I think that if you follow through and take them to small claims, they will settle just to make you go away. It is not worth the time or effort.
Good luck and let us know.
BTW: When I was 19 and the oil light came on in my car right after an oil change, I probably would have ignored it too. How could it possibly be low if it was just changed? They fill it when they change it. Right?
If I were an arbitrator, and given the facts I've been given here, I'd tend to think I would hold each party partly responsible for the damage. I'd probably try to reach this compromise: that the owner of the car buy a used engine and that the facility pay to install it. In this way, it is the owner's responsibility to seek out the used engine's warranty and reputation, since Walmart will not agree to be responsible for finding and warrantying a used engine.
David, while I do believe that WalMart has some responsibility here I don't think that the "obedience to authority" argument is going to fly. After all, if the "authority" - the mechanic - is to be relied upon then the job was done right and the light came on for some other reason. If the authority is not to be trusted only then a case can be made that the car was either under- or over-filled. But you can't say that your daughter trusted the mechanic to not under-fill while at the same time thinking that he or she would over-fill the engine. Do you see the contradiction?
By the way, one of the main conclusions of Milgram's experiments to which you refer is that people evade responsibility for their own actions by placing the blame on the authority figure. And that is really not helpful to your position.
On another note does anyone else recall the PR from Rolls Royce in the sixties when they ran a RR without oil for 30 minutes and the engine was then filled and ran fine? I don't remember where I saw this - probably not an ad since when did Rolls ever need to advertise.
Thanks, chuckboy, I have also had good success with BBB, but I have never gone to the Attorney Generals office. Per motoprof, my daughter did not see the over fill as a problem, so there is no contradiction. She only say having too little oil as a problem. ...And yes, she did believe that an mechanic had done the jog that he was to do, and that she, who knows nothing about cars, can trust the work that was done.
By the way, the car did not come with its owner's manual. That's why I had to explain the "idiot lights" with her. (I say idiot lights because an auto parts salesperson I once knew as a boy, when dials went out and lights came in, called them "idiot lights" because the problem was already developed and could not be caught as dials could alert a driver before a problem, hence light on: "your car is in trouble you idiot!"
Also, I talked to my wife, and she was the last to drive with my daughter to get gas before going to Fargo. She said the engine was not running smoothly, but it was NOT loud and the oil light was off at that time. I don't understand how these lights go on and off, but I guess they do.
Again, I know it is so tempting for those of us who know something about engines to want to put blame on my daughter, but it was not my daughter who did not fill her car with oil. She could identify the oil light on her car. She knew the car should not be low on oil. She knew the mechanic had filled her car with oil. She assumed that since the mechanic had filled the car with oil and the oil light was on, the oil was really full and when the car ran for a while the light would go off. The light did go off. And again, for her, too much oil had never been explained as a problem, only too little oil is a problem. I know that I took pains to tell her that too little oil was a problem, I never saw a time when she would run into a situation with too much oil, so I never got into that with her.
And motoprof, if what you say was the main point of Milgrim's experiments, Aristotle beat him to that point long, long ago. David
I'm with isell; I'd apportion liability 50-50 at most. The standard of behavior is what a reasonable person should do or should have done. Here you have a red warning light coupled with horrible noises. You don't have to be a F1 engine designer to know that something bad is wrong. IMO, the daughter shares AT LEAST 50% of the responsibility.
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
BTW: When I was 19 and the oil light came on in my car right after an oil change, I probably would have ignored it too. How could it possibly be low if it was just changed? They fill it when they change it. Right?
Back when I was in college, my uncle took my Granddad's '85 Silverado to some quickie lube place for an oil change. Granddad has passed away by that time and the truck mainly just sat around. I'd drive it to college every once in awhile (I lived with them while in school), Grandmom would drive it once in a blue moon, and my uncle would drive it occasionally. But it would often sit for a week or more.
One morning, I went out to start it up, and the oil light came on like they always do on start-up. But it didn't go off! I shut the truck off after a few seconds, and checked the dipstick. NOTHING! It was parked on the grass. Looked underneath, and I saw a slick spot right underneath the drain plug, and some oil around the plug. It was loose enough to take off by hand. :surprise:
I'd like to think this was an isolated incident, but a couple months ago, my roommate called me at work and said he thought his '06 Xterra was leaking oil, because of these little spots that were showing up in the gravel driveway. Now, I still have Granddad's old pickup, and earlier this year it was leaking oil again, because of some bad pressure sensor or valve or something. So there were spots all over the driveway from that. And my roommate was starting to park his Xterra in roughly the same spot where I used to park the truck, because in his old spot by a tree the birds were pooping all over it.
I told him the spots were most likely just from when my truck was leaking oil. However, even I noticed that some of those spots seemed pretty fresh, considering the truck had been fixed for a few months by this time. Well, when I got home, I looked up under the Xterra, and sure enough, there was oil leaking from the drain plug. I went to feel it, and it loose enough that I could've taken it off with my fingers! This wasn't a quickie lube place either, but done courtesy of the Nissan dealer from where he bought it! :surprise:
Mr-Shiftright... please read the post just before yours... I corrected myself. I thought that the engine was making terrible noises, but my wife corrected me on that. She and my daughter's two friends noticed that the car wasn't running the same, but it wasn't real noisy. The oil light had gone off again. My daughter had no idea what difference in the performance of her car's engine would result from an oil change would make. This was her first. And by the way... I don't think I'll win against Walmart corporate muscle attorneys... not even 10%. It's just the principle involved. I know they errored and they are to be the experts. My daughter never went to tech school and knows how to drive a car and not how it operates. Thanks all! David
Very well spoken....but alas, the point comes down to the fact that the oil light means "shut the engine off now and investigate". It's not a warning, it is a dire message of distress. No owner's manual or mechanic would tell you that if the oil light came on, you should drive slowly to your nearest repair shop. They all tell you to stop the car and check it out.
The low oil was NOT her fault (that's her 50% gain). Not stopping was her sole responsibility, in my two cents of an opinion. Had she stopped at the first lighting of the red light, her engine would probably have been fine today...you can test this by noticing that often when you do an oil change, the engine starts and the oil light stays on for a few seconds.
The problem with the Oil idiot light is that on a four quart engine, 1.5 quarts will keep the light off when the engine is at no more than moderate speed, in a cruising mode, no cornering, no hard braking. As long as there is enough oil for the pick up, the pressure will stay high enough to keep the light off.
This is the first clue to low oil with a light: It will flicker on and off with braking and cornering. Guages will swing about wildly as air passes by the sending unit. Even a dampened gauge will get your attention by the wide swing movement. Likewise, a blinking oil light should cause an immediate engine shut off as soon as safely practical.
This would be my thought on how the engine ran 277 miles with almost no oil. While not a good situation, it would appear the engine was getting nominal lubrication from the small amount of oil being picked up. On an older engine with some wear, the looser tolerances might accomodate less lubrication before locking up.
Some of us who are older might be used to ohv rather than ohc engines, and cast iron blocks rather than alloy blocks. I think today's engines are much more susceptible to drops in oil pressure and overheating than an old cast iron pushrod motor.
Mr_Shiftright, you are absolutely correct. You get it. I get it. I think all the posters on this site get it... an oil light does not come on because the oil is too full. The problem is that my daughter did NOT get it... she really didn't. She was trained to drive a car, not understand it mechanically. She knew that if the oil light came on when she was driving the oil was low and she needed to get it checked. Since she had just had the car serviced at Walmart she KNEW IT COULD NOT BE LOW... it must be overfilled. When I asked her why she didn't have me check the oil after the oil light went on, she said she thought it was just too full (and in her mind that would not be a problem) and the light would go off (and it did).
But Mr_Shiftright and jlflemmons, boy have I learned a lot in this process. Again you both make excellent points, but I NEVER realized that the oil engine light would come on and then go off again. I thought it would stay on permanently if the oil was low. Frankly (and oh what an idiot I am), if before this happened to my daughter I saw the oil light go on and then go off again, I'd likely check the oil, but with no sense of urgency to do it soon. Obviously, I now know better. This just illustrates that when you're not a mechanic, but know just enough to change oil, lubricate (and in the old days change spark plugs, etc.), you may not posses the full spectrum of information to understand what the dials and "idiot lights" are telling you. I have an associate who blew up his engine because the oil light went on and then went off and so he thought everything was fine... but not so.
Also, I have lights going on sometimes like "service engine soon" and then I go in and they say there's no problem, just some caution the computer puts out or something to that effect.
All I'm trying to say is that the reason the engine broke down is that Walmart did not fill the engine with oil. My daughter's ignorance contributed to the fact that the error was not discovered, but it had nothing to do with the error itself. As I said, she could have driven this car with its past engine for years being blissfully ignorant of just how the oil light works (as I also now have confesses ignorance) if Walmart would have filled the engine with the proper amount of oil. Thanks guys, I'm learning a lot!
I knew a guy who had an old (at the time) Dodge Dart with the 225 slant six. One dark, rainy night, he blew a heater hose on the Harbor Freeway while driving 60MPH in heavy traffic. Before he could get safely off the road, the engine got so hot that it seized up.
The local junkyards were closed so he had it towed to the gas station where I worked part time. He figured he might salvage the new tires and battery we had recently installed.
In the morning, our boss spotted it and having no idea what had happened, decided to take a look at it.
The keys were in the ignition, so he started it right up!
He spotted the ruptured hose, replaced it, saw it was due for an oil change so we did that too.
Then the guy called about his Dart and apologized for dumping it on our lot.
" It's fixed, come and get it...it had a bad hose"
" No, it had a seized engine, it's all burned up"
" Huh?? what are you talking about, it's running fine"
It had over 100,000 miles when that happened and the guy drove it for years afterwards.
Yeah, I've heard other stories of slant sixes doing that. Often they'll seize up in the sense that they'll just quit running, but once they cool down they'll run again.
The slant six is also an engine that's prone to sludging, although I don't think that's a well-known fact because when we think of sludging these days, we think of Toyota 3.0's and Mopar 2.7's and VW engines and such becoming giant aluminum bookends as a result of it. The slant six was built to a loose enough tolerance that all the sludge really does is plug up oil leaks! :P
I had a '69 Dart GT with the slant six, and overheated it once when the water pump went bad. Drove it from the college campus to home, about 10 miles.
Now that I think about it though, the water pump went out on my '80 Malibu V-6 when I was about 40 miles from home. I managed to get it home somehow, driving it for a bit until the idiot light for the temp came on, popping it into neutral and revving it whenever I could, etc. I actually did push it far enough that it died a couple times, but it would finally re-start. Guess it was a miracle I didn't do any permanent damage to it!
"The slant six is also an engine that's prone to sludging, although I don't think that's a well-known fact..."
Hmmm, for my part I don't think the Slant-Six was a sludger per-se. I've overhauled more than my fair share of those monsters (physical size not displacement), and have seen many that were sludged and many that weren't. The difference in every single case was the type of oil used. In every single case of a sludged 170, 198 or 225 slant-six that I cracked open, the owner(s) had used a Pennsylvania grade crude (mostly Quaker State and Pennzoil), and the paraffin base in those oils was reason for the sludging. The flip side was when I cracked open those engines that had been run on either the Valvoline or Havoline of the day, they were practically as clean inside as the day they left the factory.
As a youngster, I had the fortune to meet and actually work with some of the best mechanics in the business. I didn't say "technician", I said "mechanic" because that's what they were. These guys knew how to FIX things and not just REPLACE things.
In the Mobil station where I worked after school, they hired an old timer named Bob Morgan. He was among other things, the BEST carburator guy I have ever known.
One day, he pulled a valve cover off a Ford V-8 and he told me to come take a look. The entire valve train was coated in thick sludge. " This is a Pennzoil engine" he exclaimed.
He went on to tell me that as a young guy he had worked in a Cadillac dealer. They used Pennzoil and Havoline and gave the customers their choice. Once the customer decided, that is what their car would get.
He said at that time, they would pull the oil pans after 50,000 miles and clean them out. The Pennzoil cars required a lot of work scraping the sludge with a putty knife while the Havoline cars required nothing but a wipe with a cloth.
When the Ford owner returned, he proudly confirmed that he used nothing but Pennzoil and swore by the stuff.
It's probably better now, but I still won't use it or Quaker State in my cars.
Bob just swore by Havoline and he said he had never once had to tear down a Cadillac engine that had used it.
"Bob just swore by Havoline and he said he had never once had to tear down a Cadillac engine that had used it."
I actually had to tear down a few Valvoline and Havoline engines, however, not because of the oil per-se, but mostly due to oil starvation. In one case the owned of the car (a 1965 Dodge Dart) went for a nice drive along the fire roads north east of San Diego and managed to puncture his oil pan. Apparently his idiot light was burned out because he claimed to never have seen it illuminated. Maybe yes, maybe not so yes, it was working when I finished rebuilding his engine. In one other memorable case one of my lesser than bright college buddies shifted his newly obtained second hand mid 1960s Valiant with a "Three on the Tree" from third to first "for engine braking" while descending a very steep back road about 100 miles east of San Diego. To the engine's credit, the bottom end held together, however it dropped two exhaust valves and made a mess of things that way.
One thing I did see somewhat regularly (regardless of oil type) was damaged bearings. It seems that due to the very long oil pan, if one was descending a really steep incline and was running with low oil (not uncommon given how the valve cover and spark plug sleeves leaked), the remaining oil would pool forward of the rear most section of the oil pickup, and the engine would start sucking air.
So...I keep reading these stories about Pennzoil and Quaker State ("when I was a kid," "back in the day," etc).
I live in PA and occasionally travel to the northern counties that still product some oil. I don't think that Quaker State or Pennzoil have any refineries in this state. Wikipeida shows 7 refineries in PA - none look to be related to QS or PZ.
Is there any reason to relate these old stories to the current product marketed by SOPUS, considering that they meet the requirements of ILSAC GF-4, GF-3 and GF-2. All grades meet the latest API SM service class?
Based upon the engines that I worked on and the "common knowledge" on the streets in the mid 1970s, Valvoline and Havoline were both mineral based oils while the Pennsylvania grade crudes were paraffin based. Beyond that I have no specific knowledge of the hydrocarbon chain differences and such, just what I learned in the wrenching circles of yore. ;-)
"Is there any reason to relate these old stories to the current product marketed by SOPUS, considering that they meet the requirements of ILSAC GF-4, GF-3 and GF-2. All grades meet the latest API SM service class?"
While I have no scientific evidence to point one way or another, I have come across some recent oils that don't pass the smell test. What's the "smell test" you ask? Well, if you'd ever cracked open a mill that had used a paraffin based oil you'd know "that smell", a smell so vile that no matter how many engines I'd opened up, I'd still almost barf every time that smell reached my nose. :P
Advertising was so, ummm, "truthful" back then, errr, or so I thought. I was so taken in by the advertising claims of the day that I actually bought (I am embarrassed to say) a Chevy Vega. Then, to add insult to injury, I compounded my mistake by feeding it Quaker State 10W-30. Not surprisingly that engine was burning a quart of oil every 60 miles before the odometer even saw the 50,000 mile mark.
So sure that I had made wise choices with that car that I kind of over extended myself when buying it, knowing that it would last me a good long time. Uh-huh, yeah right. When the engine got so bad that it could have been used by the Navy to lay down a smoke screen to cover a couple of destroyers, I had the block bored out and crush-sleeved with iron sleeves. I then reassembeled the engine and promptly sold it at a HUGE loss.
Licking my wounds on the Vega, I bought a 1966 Plymouth Valiant 200 Sedan with just over 100,000 miles on the clock that had been parked in a farmer field and left to rot. I happily paid the farmer $200 for the title immediately after he told me that his mechanic told him that the engine was about to "blow any minute". Fortunately by then I'd worked on a number of 225s and I was betting that his mechanic was full of the manure that was all around the car.
I had to drain out the nasty grayish oil (Quaker State) and put a battery in it and after fifteen seconds of cranking it started right up. Not surprising to anyone who knows about these engines, the car had over 200,000 miles on the clock when a high speed chase came through the neighborhood of a friend of mine. Unfortunately both the dude on the run and the police car hit the Valiant and it was no more. :-(
And by the way... I don't think I'll win against Walmart corporate muscle attorneys... not even 10%. It's just the principle involved.
Do you have full coverage on the vehicle? If you do, contact your insurance company. They may, depending on your coverage, cover the engine and then go after the responsible party (where you had the oil changed).
I have done several rebuilds for insurance companies and most of them were incidents like yours. The last one was a Jeep engine (see my carspace Jeep engine photos) that they installed the wrong oil filter on and their insurance company paid me to rebuild their engine.
Kinda sorta. I grew up in the Detroit area and moved to SD in 1975. ;-)
I didn't discover the robustness of the Slant Sixes until about a year later, and when I did that was all I would drive until I could finally afford a well used 1970 Challenger with a 318 "Three on the Floor" (which I upgraded to a 340 4-Speed).
So, no, there's nothing to say that these oils are presently sludge makers. Don't get me wrong, I've been changing oil and filters for close to 30 years. I was always a "by the book" kind of guy, following the severe driving maintenance schedule. Over the years, in the '70's and early 80's, I remember using QS pretty regularly. Never had an engine sludge - and I ran them to pretty high mileage (100K or better, but the bodies always rotted away by then). By the '80's, I was running VW's and switched to Castrol (their 20w-50 was pretty readily available).
Somewhere in the early '90's, I switched over to M1 and I'm still there (0w-40 is my cup of tea).
Thanks for taking time to post, 0patience. I did check with my insurance company, and they don't cover this sort of thing. I had a few others give me the same advice, and that's why I talked with my agent. He contacted the head office and they said... nope. Again, thanks.
1997 Honda Accord 2.2 liter engine with 140,000 miles, 120K of which were on Mobil 1, 5w-30, with a 5,000 to 7,000 mile OCI. I'm very happy with the cleanliness!
Comments
Just as a word to the wise, I'd really suggest that you make your daughter sit down and RTFM (Read The Friendly Manual). That exercise will keep her out of a world of trouble in her life.
Regarding which head gasket let loose, at this point I'm not convinced that either of them did. I swapped the gaskets as an attempt to cure a slow coolant leak into the oil (never a good thing). After the gasket replacement my fuel mileage went up a bit (not too surprising I guess), however, the rate of coolant loss doesn't seem to have changed much if at all. I have since found out that the timing chain cover has a coolant cross over, and apparently the gasket at the cross over points can be problematic. Grrr. If I'd known I would have done the timing cover gasket at the same time. :sick:
Best Regards,
Shipo
I know I would have sent them to a machine shop for a looksee and a quick clean up.
Interestingly enough, the day I got the van back together I left on a 2,000 mile road trip. On the way out I noticed that my fuel economy was rivaling the best that van had ever delivered (mid 25s via the trip computer) and I wasn't exactly taking it easy. On the way home I decided to take it easy by keeping the speed in the 67 mph range and managed to go from Adair, MI to Albany, NY on a single tank of gas, a distance of 504 miles. When I filled up in Albany the trip computer was registering an astounding (for a 3.8 liter minivan) 28.2 mpg. Not too shabby. ;-)
Best Regards,
Shipo
I guess valve jobs have gone the way of the carburator!
Best Regards,
Shipo
Oh, nevermind....I remember the last mechine shop closed their doors in 1987. They sold their Sioux valve machine and hard seat grinder for scrap metal.
The boring bar is still sitting in the alley in back of the boarded up machine shop.
Bottom line, I must not let the issue be switched to my daughter's mechanical ignorance and poor judgment. She could go to the grave with that and with her old engine serving her well for many years. The issue is not with my daughter, the issue the ruined the engine is that a Walmart tech made some mistake.
And Chuckboy, you make some good points... I never thought about going to the Attorney's General office. I'm not quite sure how to do that... perhaps over the Internet. And I got a bang out of your Paul Harvey ending ;-)
Walmart's claim department has already said they will not help us out in any way. One reason that I am going to small claims court is because it will cost me little and will cost Walmart at least the price of the engine. Also I am very well known in my area because of public speaking and I am an author with another book to be released in 2008 by a large publisher. At least in our area, it won't work using me as an example to detour others... and then at that, what are they detouring people from? Are they trying to stop people from not paying for Walmart's mistakes by delivering the full brunt of their corporate muscle? Thanks again folks...
Another poster jumped in and rather bluntly stated that he felt 95% of the blame should be placed on your daughter.
Myself, and a couple of others seem to feel that the responsibility should be shared, maybe 50-50.
Remember, she drove 277 miles with a red light on and noises coming from the engine!
How about you? Do you feel your daughter is zero percent at fault here? Just curious...
And, don't be too sure yu will prevail in Small Claims Court either.
The fact you are well known in your area and an author shouldn't be a factor in any of this.
I am NOT a fan of Wal-Mart! Please know that and just a tiny part of me keeps thinking..." Why would a person take a car there in the first place?"
This isn't revelant either.
Regarding being a dinosaur, yeah, me too. The last time I had the heads done on one of my cars was in the late 1970s. The "Valve Job" included a complete disassembly and cleaning of the heads, facing the valves (both new and old) and seats, knurling the valve guides, adding Perfect Circle valve stem seals, testing the spring tension (and replacing a few where necessary) and reassembly for something like $25 per V8 head plus parts. I kinda doubt I could find a place to do a V6 head with as much attention to detail for ten times the cost these days. :-/
Best Regards,
Shipo
Sadly, most of the old time craftsmen machinists are no longer with us.
Best Regards,
Shipo
I have found that if you tell your story honestly to the AG and BBB, they will bend over backwards to help. It also helps if they have had several similiar complaints from the same location. I think that if you follow through and take them to small claims, they will settle just to make you go away. It is not worth the time or effort.
Good luck and let us know.
BTW: When I was 19 and the oil light came on in my car right after an oil change, I probably would have ignored it too. How could it possibly be low if it was just changed? They fill it when they change it. Right?
It's called Common Sense...sorry.
By the way, one of the main conclusions of Milgram's experiments to which you refer is that people evade responsibility for their own actions by placing the blame on the authority figure. And that is really not helpful to your position.
On another note does anyone else recall the PR from Rolls Royce in the sixties when they ran a RR without oil for 30 minutes and the engine was then filled and ran fine? I don't remember where I saw this - probably not an ad since when did Rolls ever need to advertise.
By the way, the car did not come with its owner's manual. That's why I had to explain the "idiot lights" with her. (I say idiot lights because an auto parts salesperson I once knew as a boy, when dials went out and lights came in, called them "idiot lights" because the problem was already developed and could not be caught as dials could alert a driver before a problem, hence light on: "your car is in trouble you idiot!"
Also, I talked to my wife, and she was the last to drive with my daughter to get gas before going to Fargo. She said the engine was not running smoothly, but it was NOT loud and the oil light was off at that time. I don't understand how these lights go on and off, but I guess they do.
Again, I know it is so tempting for those of us who know something about engines to want to put blame on my daughter, but it was not my daughter who did not fill her car with oil. She could identify the oil light on her car. She knew the car should not be low on oil. She knew the mechanic had filled her car with oil. She assumed that since the mechanic had filled the car with oil and the oil light was on, the oil was really full and when the car ran for a while the light would go off. The light did go off. And again, for her, too much oil had never been explained as a problem, only too little oil is a problem. I know that I took pains to tell her that too little oil was a problem, I never saw a time when she would run into a situation with too much oil, so I never got into that with her.
And motoprof, if what you say was the main point of Milgrim's experiments, Aristotle beat him to that point long, long ago. David
Mine: 1995 318ti Club Sport-2020 C43-1996 Speed Triple Challenge Cup Replica
Wife's: 2021 Sahara 4xe
Son's: 2018 330i xDrive
Back when I was in college, my uncle took my Granddad's '85 Silverado to some quickie lube place for an oil change. Granddad has passed away by that time and the truck mainly just sat around. I'd drive it to college every once in awhile (I lived with them while in school), Grandmom would drive it once in a blue moon, and my uncle would drive it occasionally. But it would often sit for a week or more.
One morning, I went out to start it up, and the oil light came on like they always do on start-up. But it didn't go off! I shut the truck off after a few seconds, and checked the dipstick. NOTHING! It was parked on the grass. Looked underneath, and I saw a slick spot right underneath the drain plug, and some oil around the plug. It was loose enough to take off by hand. :surprise:
I'd like to think this was an isolated incident, but a couple months ago, my roommate called me at work and said he thought his '06 Xterra was leaking oil, because of these little spots that were showing up in the gravel driveway. Now, I still have Granddad's old pickup, and earlier this year it was leaking oil again, because of some bad pressure sensor or valve or something. So there were spots all over the driveway from that. And my roommate was starting to park his Xterra in roughly the same spot where I used to park the truck, because in his old spot by a tree the birds were pooping all over it.
I told him the spots were most likely just from when my truck was leaking oil. However, even I noticed that some of those spots seemed pretty fresh, considering the truck had been fixed for a few months by this time. Well, when I got home, I looked up under the Xterra, and sure enough, there was oil leaking from the drain plug. I went to feel it, and it loose enough that I could've taken it off with my fingers! This wasn't a quickie lube place either, but done courtesy of the Nissan dealer from where he bought it! :surprise:
The low oil was NOT her fault (that's her 50% gain). Not stopping was her sole responsibility, in my two cents of an opinion. Had she stopped at the first lighting of the red light, her engine would probably have been fine today...you can test this by noticing that often when you do an oil change, the engine starts and the oil light stays on for a few seconds.
This is the first clue to low oil with a light: It will flicker on and off with braking and cornering. Guages will swing about wildly as air passes by the sending unit. Even a dampened gauge will get your attention by the wide swing movement. Likewise, a blinking oil light should cause an immediate engine shut off as soon as safely practical.
This would be my thought on how the engine ran 277 miles with almost no oil. While not a good situation, it would appear the engine was getting nominal lubrication from the small amount of oil being picked up. On an older engine with some wear, the looser tolerances might accomodate less lubrication before locking up.
But Mr_Shiftright and jlflemmons, boy have I learned a lot in this process. Again you both make excellent points, but I NEVER realized that the oil engine light would come on and then go off again. I thought it would stay on permanently if the oil was low. Frankly (and oh what an idiot I am), if before this happened to my daughter I saw the oil light go on and then go off again, I'd likely check the oil, but with no sense of urgency to do it soon. Obviously, I now know better. This just illustrates that when you're not a mechanic, but know just enough to change oil, lubricate (and in the old days change spark plugs, etc.), you may not posses the full spectrum of information to understand what the dials and "idiot lights" are telling you. I have an associate who blew up his engine because the oil light went on and then went off and so he thought everything was fine... but not so.
Also, I have lights going on sometimes like "service engine soon" and then I go in and they say there's no problem, just some caution the computer puts out or something to that effect.
All I'm trying to say is that the reason the engine broke down is that Walmart did not fill the engine with oil. My daughter's ignorance contributed to the fact that the error was not discovered, but it had nothing to do with the error itself. As I said, she could have driven this car with its past engine for years being blissfully ignorant of just how the oil light works (as I also now have confesses ignorance) if Walmart would have filled the engine with the proper amount of oil. Thanks guys, I'm learning a lot!
The local junkyards were closed so he had it towed to the gas station where I worked part time. He figured he might salvage the new tires and battery we had recently installed.
In the morning, our boss spotted it and having no idea what had happened, decided to take a look at it.
The keys were in the ignition, so he started it right up!
He spotted the ruptured hose, replaced it, saw it was due for an oil change so we did that too.
Then the guy called about his Dart and apologized for dumping it on our lot.
" It's fixed, come and get it...it had a bad hose"
" No, it had a seized engine, it's all burned up"
" Huh?? what are you talking about, it's running fine"
It had over 100,000 miles when that happened and the guy drove it for years afterwards.
Try that one with a modern engine!
The slant six is also an engine that's prone to sludging, although I don't think that's a well-known fact because when we think of sludging these days, we think of Toyota 3.0's and Mopar 2.7's and VW engines and such becoming giant aluminum bookends as a result of it. The slant six was built to a loose enough tolerance that all the sludge really does is plug up oil leaks! :P
I had a '69 Dart GT with the slant six, and overheated it once when the water pump went bad. Drove it from the college campus to home, about 10 miles.
Now that I think about it though, the water pump went out on my '80 Malibu V-6 when I was about 40 miles from home. I managed to get it home somehow, driving it for a bit until the idiot light for the temp came on, popping it into neutral and revving it whenever I could, etc. I actually did push it far enough that it died a couple times, but it would finally re-start. Guess it was a miracle I didn't do any permanent damage to it!
Hmmm, for my part I don't think the Slant-Six was a sludger per-se. I've overhauled more than my fair share of those monsters (physical size not displacement), and have seen many that were sludged and many that weren't. The difference in every single case was the type of oil used. In every single case of a sludged 170, 198 or 225 slant-six that I cracked open, the owner(s) had used a Pennsylvania grade crude (mostly Quaker State and Pennzoil), and the paraffin base in those oils was reason for the sludging. The flip side was when I cracked open those engines that had been run on either the Valvoline or Havoline of the day, they were practically as clean inside as the day they left the factory.
Best Regards,
Shipo
I agree though...mostly the Slant Six suffered from abuse, and cheapskate owners.
Easy engine to rebuild,though. Has about 3 moving parts in it.
"Primitive but effective" powerplant.
As a youngster, I had the fortune to meet and actually work with some of the best mechanics in the business. I didn't say "technician", I said "mechanic" because that's what they were. These guys knew how to FIX things and not just REPLACE things.
In the Mobil station where I worked after school, they hired an old timer named Bob Morgan. He was among other things, the BEST carburator guy I have ever known.
One day, he pulled a valve cover off a Ford V-8 and he told me to come take a look. The entire valve train was coated in thick sludge. " This is a Pennzoil engine" he exclaimed.
He went on to tell me that as a young guy he had worked in a Cadillac dealer. They used Pennzoil and Havoline and gave the customers their choice. Once the customer decided, that is what their car would get.
He said at that time, they would pull the oil pans after 50,000 miles and clean them out. The Pennzoil cars required a lot of work scraping the sludge with a putty knife while the Havoline cars required nothing but a wipe with a cloth.
When the Ford owner returned, he proudly confirmed that he used nothing but Pennzoil and swore by the stuff.
It's probably better now, but I still won't use it or Quaker State in my cars.
Bob just swore by Havoline and he said he had never once had to tear down a Cadillac engine that had used it.
I actually had to tear down a few Valvoline and Havoline engines, however, not because of the oil per-se, but mostly due to oil starvation. In one case the owned of the car (a 1965 Dodge Dart) went for a nice drive along the fire roads north east of San Diego and managed to puncture his oil pan. Apparently his idiot light was burned out because he claimed to never have seen it illuminated. Maybe yes, maybe not so yes, it was working when I finished rebuilding his engine. In one other memorable case one of my lesser than bright college buddies shifted his newly obtained second hand mid 1960s Valiant with a "Three on the Tree" from third to first "for engine braking" while descending a very steep back road about 100 miles east of San Diego. To the engine's credit, the bottom end held together, however it dropped two exhaust valves and made a mess of things that way.
One thing I did see somewhat regularly (regardless of oil type) was damaged bearings. It seems that due to the very long oil pan, if one was descending a really steep incline and was running with low oil (not uncommon given how the valve cover and spark plug sleeves leaked), the remaining oil would pool forward of the rear most section of the oil pickup, and the engine would start sucking air.
Best Regards,
Shipo
I live in PA and occasionally travel to the northern counties that still product some oil. I don't think that Quaker State or Pennzoil have any refineries in this state. Wikipeida shows 7 refineries in PA - none look to be related to QS or PZ.
Is there any reason to relate these old stories to the current product marketed by SOPUS, considering that they meet the requirements of ILSAC GF-4, GF-3 and GF-2. All grades meet the latest API SM service class?
Of course not! Some of us that have been around for awhile are just natural storytellers!
I have no idea if these oils gunk up engines anymore but my memories are so vivid I'll stay away from them even now.
Best Regards,
Shipo
While I have no scientific evidence to point one way or another, I have come across some recent oils that don't pass the smell test. What's the "smell test" you ask? Well, if you'd ever cracked open a mill that had used a paraffin based oil you'd know "that smell", a smell so vile that no matter how many engines I'd opened up, I'd still almost barf every time that smell reached my nose. :P
Best Regards,
Shipo
It is amazing how people were so loyal to those brands!
So sure that I had made wise choices with that car that I kind of over extended myself when buying it, knowing that it would last me a good long time. Uh-huh, yeah right. When the engine got so bad that it could have been used by the Navy to lay down a smoke screen to cover a couple of destroyers, I had the block bored out and crush-sleeved with iron sleeves. I then reassembeled the engine and promptly sold it at a HUGE loss.
Licking my wounds on the Vega, I bought a 1966 Plymouth Valiant 200 Sedan with just over 100,000 miles on the clock that had been parked in a farmer field and left to rot. I happily paid the farmer $200 for the title immediately after he told me that his mechanic told him that the engine was about to "blow any minute". Fortunately by then I'd worked on a number of 225s and I was betting that his mechanic was full of the manure that was all around the car.
I had to drain out the nasty grayish oil (Quaker State) and put a battery in it and after fifteen seconds of cranking it started right up. Not surprising to anyone who knows about these engines, the car had over 200,000 miles on the clock when a high speed chase came through the neighborhood of a friend of mine. Unfortunately both the dude on the run and the police car hit the Valiant and it was no more. :-(
Best Regards,
Shipo
Yeah, those slant sixes were bulletproof during a period when people were very lucky to get 100,000 out of an engine before a major overhaul.
The Torquflites behind them were strong units too!
Do you have full coverage on the vehicle?
If you do, contact your insurance company. They may, depending on your coverage, cover the engine and then go after the responsible party (where you had the oil changed).
I have done several rebuilds for insurance companies and most of them were incidents like yours.
The last one was a Jeep engine (see my carspace Jeep engine photos) that they installed the wrong oil filter on and their insurance company paid me to rebuild their engine.
Something to check on anyways.
Kinda sorta. I grew up in the Detroit area and moved to SD in 1975. ;-)
I didn't discover the robustness of the Slant Sixes until about a year later, and when I did that was all I would drive until I could finally afford a well used 1970 Challenger with a 318 "Three on the Floor" (which I upgraded to a 340 4-Speed).
Best Regards,
Shipo
Somewhere in the early '90's, I switched over to M1 and I'm still there (0w-40 is my cup of tea).
Under comprehensive??
Not that I would condone such an act.
1997 Honda Accord 2.2 liter engine with 140,000 miles, 120K of which were on Mobil 1, 5w-30, with a 5,000 to 7,000 mile OCI. I'm very happy with the cleanliness!