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What do I do if dealership overfilled my engine with 2.5 extra quarts of oil?
So about a year ago, I had my chevy cruze serviced. I just took it in for a regular oil change. As I was leaving, my car stalled out on me in the middle of a busy state rd. my car puttered back to the dealership and I let them know what happened. They seem puzzled and said someone may have not tightened something correctly. I waited another 45 min and they came to get me, and they stated something was not tightened all the way. I went to leave again and needless to say it happened again. so I took it back and they said they would drive it. 30 minutes later they came back and they said it wasn't replicating and sent me on my way. I got half way home and it stalled out again. I had to the car back and they sent me home in a loaner car. they had my car for almost 2 weeks. What had happened was someone over filled my engine with 2.5 extra quarts of oil. I was in shick. I talked to service manager who basically made an excuse for the technicians and offered me a free oil change the next time (I already had free 2 years of maintenance that came with the brand new veh purchase). So, I wasn't too happy.
Fast forward to this past fall. My car lost power and my engine light came on flashing. I took it in and they had told me that my turbo completely went out and they replaced it with a brand new turbo and they had to replace the catalytic converter. My question is, do you think they permanently caused long term damage to my engine? they did $6k of work with the turbo and i have 20,000 more miles until my warranty is up. I don't want to be dealing with issues due to negligence on the dealerships part. Thanks in advance for any input and feedback.
Fast forward to this past fall. My car lost power and my engine light came on flashing. I took it in and they had told me that my turbo completely went out and they replaced it with a brand new turbo and they had to replace the catalytic converter. My question is, do you think they permanently caused long term damage to my engine? they did $6k of work with the turbo and i have 20,000 more miles until my warranty is up. I don't want to be dealing with issues due to negligence on the dealerships part. Thanks in advance for any input and feedback.
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Answers
So how did you verify that there was so much extra oil in the engine? Could it possibly have been 1 quart and not 2.5 quarts---the one quart scenario makes more sense with what you posted.
With too much oil in the engine, lots of pressure is put upon seals; also the oil can "cavitate" (get foamy) and the oil pump might not be able to pick it up--in that case your engine would have self-destructed.
The only part of your description that does make sense to me is the catalytic converter failing---if you had an excess of oil in the engine, it would start to smoke, and the burned oil residue would ruin the catalytic.
The turbo, too, could fail from oil starvation but I don't know why, in that case, the engine wouldn't have failed as well.
In any event, this was a serious error---there's really no way to say if there's been any damage but probably not if the car is running well at this point, isn't leaking, isn't using oil, and isn't making any unusual noises.
Ever since this has happened, the car has not ran right. I bought it brand new in 2013 with 2 miles on it. It has been very regularly maintained, ALL being at the dealership where I purchased the vehicle. It has been in several times for various recalls. I am just worried now because it sometimes acts like it just doesn't want to go anywhere....its super sluggish, the engine light is on and off, with most of this happening after the oil change problem. I don't even understand why it took them 2 weeks to figure out the engine was over filled. I don't have thousands of dollars to throw into it after the warranty is up due to a mishap that they caused. I have tried voicing my concerns about this with them but they said it is impossible that they caused long term damage.