Oil Filter Filter
November 6, 2018 4:21 PM Subscribe
Y'all, is it insane to think that an angry person might have removed my oil filter because they hated that I am a lefty socialist? Or something?
Y'all, is it insane to think that an angry person might have removed my oil filter because they hated that I am a lefty socialist (judging by my bumper stickers)? Or something? My oil filter mysteriously and cleanly disappeared from my car last week.
Engine light came on as I was about to enter the highway, on my way to work downtown, about 1.5 miles away. Since I work so close, I figured I would just get oil on my way home. There are 3 auto supply stores within a 10 minute walk of my house. Oil light has never gone on before.
I stopped at the post office to mail the 100 letters from my VoteForward party (hooray!) and my engine light came on and my car died as I was parallel parking. It started right back up so I figured user-error. I did my business and came back out and proceeded to drive the 2m to the auto supply store.
About .25 miles from home, in front of Texas Style Chicken and Fish, my car stopped going forward and ALL the warning lights came on and I couldn't start it. Just a weird wheezy sound. A friend pushed me the couple blocks to my house with his big red truck. Another neighbor crawled under my car and was like, whoa, you have no oil filter, and looked at me like I must be a giant idiot. Long story short, I had the car towed to my mechanic .5 miles away (same price as if it had been 20 miles).
Thinking back through my movements that morning, I think it must have "come off" at a park (near a gated community but with a lot of overnight homeless sleepers) while I was walking the dogs. There is evidence of oil pooling out on my rocky driveway.
My mechanic (also the folks who change my oil) have been scratching their heads for a week, as the clues don't make sense. The undercarriage is pretty clean. There is no apparent damage, no oil mess. The engine bits that should be ruined from driving w/o oil look pristine, however when they put on a new oil filter and added oil there was no compression ( I know next to nothing about combustion engines, can you tell?). They are having a fellow mechanic come look at it tomorrow morning to do a test that should show...something? There was talk of potentially needing to "grind down" something on the "head".
I don't really want to point the finger at my mechanic for negligence as my oil was last changed 2k miles ago, but my friends and the internet are all NEGLIGENCE!
FWIW, 2009 Ford Focus. Have driven to Fort Davis Mountains and back (10h trip each way) since oil change.
I have already started looking at Honda Fits...
Y'all, is it insane to think that an angry person might have removed my oil filter because they hated that I am a lefty socialist (judging by my bumper stickers)? Or something? My oil filter mysteriously and cleanly disappeared from my car last week.
Engine light came on as I was about to enter the highway, on my way to work downtown, about 1.5 miles away. Since I work so close, I figured I would just get oil on my way home. There are 3 auto supply stores within a 10 minute walk of my house. Oil light has never gone on before.
I stopped at the post office to mail the 100 letters from my VoteForward party (hooray!) and my engine light came on and my car died as I was parallel parking. It started right back up so I figured user-error. I did my business and came back out and proceeded to drive the 2m to the auto supply store.
About .25 miles from home, in front of Texas Style Chicken and Fish, my car stopped going forward and ALL the warning lights came on and I couldn't start it. Just a weird wheezy sound. A friend pushed me the couple blocks to my house with his big red truck. Another neighbor crawled under my car and was like, whoa, you have no oil filter, and looked at me like I must be a giant idiot. Long story short, I had the car towed to my mechanic .5 miles away (same price as if it had been 20 miles).
Thinking back through my movements that morning, I think it must have "come off" at a park (near a gated community but with a lot of overnight homeless sleepers) while I was walking the dogs. There is evidence of oil pooling out on my rocky driveway.
My mechanic (also the folks who change my oil) have been scratching their heads for a week, as the clues don't make sense. The undercarriage is pretty clean. There is no apparent damage, no oil mess. The engine bits that should be ruined from driving w/o oil look pristine, however when they put on a new oil filter and added oil there was no compression ( I know next to nothing about combustion engines, can you tell?). They are having a fellow mechanic come look at it tomorrow morning to do a test that should show...something? There was talk of potentially needing to "grind down" something on the "head".
I don't really want to point the finger at my mechanic for negligence as my oil was last changed 2k miles ago, but my friends and the internet are all NEGLIGENCE!
FWIW, 2009 Ford Focus. Have driven to Fort Davis Mountains and back (10h trip each way) since oil change.
I have already started looking at Honda Fits...
I'm going to say the opposite. Whomever changed your oil didn't put the filter on correctly and eventually it fell off. You wouldn't have gotten far away from the park or whatever if someone had pulled it off there. While it is not impossible for this to be done to you, Occam's Razor says it's much more likely the oil changer f'ed up than some rando went through all the trouble (jacking up the car, loosening the filter just so, putting car back) based on some bumper stickers. Far easier to just key the door or whatever. Far easier engine ruining things even.
The engine bits that should be ruined from driving w/o oil look pristine, however when they put on a new oil filter and added oil there was no compression ( I know next to nothing about combustion engines, can you tell?).
Also, those two statements (pristine, no compression) are at complete odds with each other. Things inside your engine (you drove it out of oil until it stopped) are the very opposite of pristine. Also, looks like they did a compression test and now they think you need to machine the head and put a new head gasket. But, because of the aforementioned non-pristine condition of the engine, the head gasket is the least of your problems.
posted by sideshow at 5:05 PM on November 6, 2018 [21 favorites]
The engine bits that should be ruined from driving w/o oil look pristine, however when they put on a new oil filter and added oil there was no compression ( I know next to nothing about combustion engines, can you tell?).
Also, those two statements (pristine, no compression) are at complete odds with each other. Things inside your engine (you drove it out of oil until it stopped) are the very opposite of pristine. Also, looks like they did a compression test and now they think you need to machine the head and put a new head gasket. But, because of the aforementioned non-pristine condition of the engine, the head gasket is the least of your problems.
posted by sideshow at 5:05 PM on November 6, 2018 [21 favorites]
Response by poster: tingting here again: I would also love advice on whether I should sue the garage or whether I should just sell my poor car for parts and find a new mechanic and a new car.
posted by tingting at 5:14 PM on November 6, 2018
posted by tingting at 5:14 PM on November 6, 2018
I think that if the garage failed to tighten the filter, it should have come off, or at least leaked, before 2000 miles.
jacking up the car, loosening the filter just so, putting car back
on my 2 cars, the filters can be loosened by reaching under the car.
A lack of oil should cause the rings/cylinders and the main/rod bearings to destroy themselves. Those may have caused the engine to seize when hot and not start. Have they examined any of the bearings?
It's going to be hard to prove what caused this.
2 miles without oil can do massive damage. Probably time for a complete rebuild, or new engine, or new car.
posted by H21 at 5:38 PM on November 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
jacking up the car, loosening the filter just so, putting car back
on my 2 cars, the filters can be loosened by reaching under the car.
A lack of oil should cause the rings/cylinders and the main/rod bearings to destroy themselves. Those may have caused the engine to seize when hot and not start. Have they examined any of the bearings?
It's going to be hard to prove what caused this.
2 miles without oil can do massive damage. Probably time for a complete rebuild, or new engine, or new car.
posted by H21 at 5:38 PM on November 6, 2018 [4 favorites]
Best answer: There is no way that anyone can make a definitive conclusion of sabotage here. Not a hope. In addition, it is also pretty hard to prove negligence because if it were the mechanic's fault it would normally have shown its head before now. A 'negligently loose' oil filter would not normally last more than two hundred miles or so, I think.
Oil filters do on occasion come loose, but it is pretty rare. It can be a faulty seal, faulty design of the part used, a distorted filter housing, all kinds of stuff. But when they come loose the pressure and vibration causes them to fall off pretty quickly and all the oil will disappear out of the hole it left. So it can be accidental/part failure without being negligence.
It would also be a very odd bit of sabotage to do, because usually that's something much more overt and angry - key the paintwork, kick the door, smash a window etc - whereas this is pretty calculating. People making a split second decision to vandalise a stranger's car are likely not going to try and slide underneath and loosen the oil filter, so if in the very unlikely event it IS sabotage it's someone more scheming than some rando with a point to make. Which, again, is unlikely.
Now the bad bit: Even if it was sabotage and even if it was negligence, ALL the engine damage is your fault entirely because of this:
"Engine light came on as I was about to enter the highway, on my way to work downtown, about 1.5 miles away.".
When the oil light comes on when you are driving, IMMEDIATELY pull to the roadside as fast as you can safely do so and check your oil level. This is the only response to an oil light coming on that is smart, in accordance with your car's manual or should even be considered. It is not an 'oil level' light, it is an oil pressure light. You should only continue to drive if the oil level has proven to be fine and the light has gone out when you restart the engine. Even then it is DEFCON 1 if it comes on again - same process, stop and check level and then plan to drive/tow the car immediately to a garage if it is still full. The oil pressure warning light is a no-shit no-joke light and this is stressed in every single car manual and every motorist should know this.
There is every chance (as in extremely likely to I'd say certain) that if you had shut the car off at the first sign of the oil light (like, within ten seconds) and found the level was down your car could have been towed to a garage and there would have been negligible inside damage. That light coming on was likely just after the filter finally fell off and the last of the oil was leaving. So you drove about two miles on an engine with zero oil. There will be a LOT of internal damage. The lack of compression is because the piston rings have scored up the cylinder bores through no lubrication, and unless they have been into the crank bearings I wouldn't be surprised if there are witness marks of wear on the crank bearings. If they just looked in at the cam bearings, I think this is why they are saying 'everything looks fine at first glance' but cam bearings are the last to see damage, in my experience.
So, I'm sorry to be blunt, but this is a weird one and regardless of cause of a loosening filter, the damage is all on you for continuing to run and especially drive the car after the warning light came on. This is a tough and expensive lesson, but understanding the car manual and knowing which warning lights are "huh, that's weird" and which ones are "Oh fuck stop the car" is part of the owner's responsibility in operating a car.
posted by Brockles at 5:51 PM on November 6, 2018 [37 favorites]
Oil filters do on occasion come loose, but it is pretty rare. It can be a faulty seal, faulty design of the part used, a distorted filter housing, all kinds of stuff. But when they come loose the pressure and vibration causes them to fall off pretty quickly and all the oil will disappear out of the hole it left. So it can be accidental/part failure without being negligence.
It would also be a very odd bit of sabotage to do, because usually that's something much more overt and angry - key the paintwork, kick the door, smash a window etc - whereas this is pretty calculating. People making a split second decision to vandalise a stranger's car are likely not going to try and slide underneath and loosen the oil filter, so if in the very unlikely event it IS sabotage it's someone more scheming than some rando with a point to make. Which, again, is unlikely.
Now the bad bit: Even if it was sabotage and even if it was negligence, ALL the engine damage is your fault entirely because of this:
"Engine light came on as I was about to enter the highway, on my way to work downtown, about 1.5 miles away.".
When the oil light comes on when you are driving, IMMEDIATELY pull to the roadside as fast as you can safely do so and check your oil level. This is the only response to an oil light coming on that is smart, in accordance with your car's manual or should even be considered. It is not an 'oil level' light, it is an oil pressure light. You should only continue to drive if the oil level has proven to be fine and the light has gone out when you restart the engine. Even then it is DEFCON 1 if it comes on again - same process, stop and check level and then plan to drive/tow the car immediately to a garage if it is still full. The oil pressure warning light is a no-shit no-joke light and this is stressed in every single car manual and every motorist should know this.
There is every chance (as in extremely likely to I'd say certain) that if you had shut the car off at the first sign of the oil light (like, within ten seconds) and found the level was down your car could have been towed to a garage and there would have been negligible inside damage. That light coming on was likely just after the filter finally fell off and the last of the oil was leaving. So you drove about two miles on an engine with zero oil. There will be a LOT of internal damage. The lack of compression is because the piston rings have scored up the cylinder bores through no lubrication, and unless they have been into the crank bearings I wouldn't be surprised if there are witness marks of wear on the crank bearings. If they just looked in at the cam bearings, I think this is why they are saying 'everything looks fine at first glance' but cam bearings are the last to see damage, in my experience.
So, I'm sorry to be blunt, but this is a weird one and regardless of cause of a loosening filter, the damage is all on you for continuing to run and especially drive the car after the warning light came on. This is a tough and expensive lesson, but understanding the car manual and knowing which warning lights are "huh, that's weird" and which ones are "Oh fuck stop the car" is part of the owner's responsibility in operating a car.
posted by Brockles at 5:51 PM on November 6, 2018 [37 favorites]
Response by poster: Bluntness appreciated. I very much appreciate hearing that. I guess there's a reason I've never experienced an oil light going on before.
posted by tingting at 5:59 PM on November 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by tingting at 5:59 PM on November 6, 2018 [3 favorites]
Parts that should be ruined are pristine? Doesn't sound like the piston rings are so pristine. You wouldn't know without opening things up, so how do they know. Guess what? No compression? That's a clear indication of a certain lack of pristineness.
posted by humboldt32 at 6:38 PM on November 6, 2018
posted by humboldt32 at 6:38 PM on November 6, 2018
I threw a rod in the engine, and all the interior bits that shouldn't be visible and now were visible looked factory fresh, so you can't go by that. (Except for the hole in the block)
I'd guess it just worked itself loose, particularly if they left the old gasket on. Oild filters have no value, so no one stole it.
If the engine still works, I'd be wary of expensive preventative maintenance, price it against a replacement engine, and gamble on how long yours will last with/without maintenance before needing a new engine.
posted by TheAdamist at 7:36 PM on November 6, 2018
I'd guess it just worked itself loose, particularly if they left the old gasket on. Oild filters have no value, so no one stole it.
If the engine still works, I'd be wary of expensive preventative maintenance, price it against a replacement engine, and gamble on how long yours will last with/without maintenance before needing a new engine.
posted by TheAdamist at 7:36 PM on November 6, 2018
Response by poster: The mechanics have been slowly disassembling the engine between scheduled jobs and they've explained pieces of what they've found to me. Unfortunately, it all kind of turns into Peanut's adult voice in my head...
...but it is useful to know that if the oil light goes on, one must stop immediately wherever they are (I was on a highway access ramp) and call for help. That's a thing I will never get wrong again. It may be my first tattoo.
posted by tingting at 8:31 PM on November 6, 2018 [8 favorites]
...but it is useful to know that if the oil light goes on, one must stop immediately wherever they are (I was on a highway access ramp) and call for help. That's a thing I will never get wrong again. It may be my first tattoo.
posted by tingting at 8:31 PM on November 6, 2018 [8 favorites]
Not grind down, leak down - a test to see what condition the rings are in.
Most oil filters have to be 'spun' on, for a considerable distance: it may take (guessing, I have never counted) up to 8-10 complete turns to get them to contact the side of the engine, and then another half to one turns to complete the seal. Backing that filter off one turn will allow leakage (oil is under high pressure when the engine is running), and any more and the oil will gush out, emptying the sump damn fast. Oil pressure will start to drop as soon as the oil starts gushing, and as soon as the filter is (say) one or two turns away from the block, there will be no oil pressure because the oil is just pumping freely out, without the restrictions in the engine that cause the pressure to build up in the system.
So the filter was very probably still on the engine (but loose) when the light came on. When the light came on, you had maybe two seconds to prevent damage, and the longer (in seconds) the engine ran (especially under load), the worse the damage. You drove how many seconds?
I spell this out to reinforce Brockles point - the oil pressure warning light is not advisory, it demands an instant response: switch off immediately, coast to the shoulder and pull off a safe distance. And remember you will have lost your power assist for steering (immediately, unless it is electric) and brakes (after one or two applications).
posted by GeeEmm at 2:51 AM on November 7, 2018 [2 favorites]
Most oil filters have to be 'spun' on, for a considerable distance: it may take (guessing, I have never counted) up to 8-10 complete turns to get them to contact the side of the engine, and then another half to one turns to complete the seal. Backing that filter off one turn will allow leakage (oil is under high pressure when the engine is running), and any more and the oil will gush out, emptying the sump damn fast. Oil pressure will start to drop as soon as the oil starts gushing, and as soon as the filter is (say) one or two turns away from the block, there will be no oil pressure because the oil is just pumping freely out, without the restrictions in the engine that cause the pressure to build up in the system.
So the filter was very probably still on the engine (but loose) when the light came on. When the light came on, you had maybe two seconds to prevent damage, and the longer (in seconds) the engine ran (especially under load), the worse the damage. You drove how many seconds?
I spell this out to reinforce Brockles point - the oil pressure warning light is not advisory, it demands an instant response: switch off immediately, coast to the shoulder and pull off a safe distance. And remember you will have lost your power assist for steering (immediately, unless it is electric) and brakes (after one or two applications).
posted by GeeEmm at 2:51 AM on November 7, 2018 [2 favorites]
Looking at a DIY video it appears that the filter is easily reachable from under the front bumper without needing to remove a belly pan. It's totally possible that someone loosened the filter, but not sure how you'd prove it. I also don't suspect negligence on the mechanic's part, because as mentioned you've gotten some mileage and heat cycles into it which should have caused it to fail by now.
You may be able to find a used motor (short or long block depending) for cheaper than extensive testing and repair of your existing motor, but it also may not pencil vs buying a used Fit.
posted by a halcyon day at 11:05 AM on November 7, 2018
You may be able to find a used motor (short or long block depending) for cheaper than extensive testing and repair of your existing motor, but it also may not pencil vs buying a used Fit.
posted by a halcyon day at 11:05 AM on November 7, 2018
If the oil filter had been loosened or removed, most (4-5 quarts) of your oil should be at your last parking spot. It should be very obvious. Even if it was loosened enough to come off later, it should have leaked like a sieve right away. If there's a huge amount of oil there, then sabotage.
posted by 445supermag at 12:25 PM on November 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by 445supermag at 12:25 PM on November 7, 2018 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Mitheral at 4:58 PM on November 6, 2018 [6 favorites]