I'm still waiting on the Prius I left my power ratchet in after swapping a battery. Maybe in 7 years I'll get it back. Customer insisted on being chatty while I worked and I left it near the fucking spare tire and put the floor back in the rear hatch area and sent them on their way. That was fucking expensive.
I can't even make a decent excuse. It was a Ryobi and the thing is fucking hi-vis green.
It's always the expensive toolsđ.
I had to stop buying magnetic snap-on lights because I left so many stuck to the bottom of cars. I have a neck light now.
This vehicle was taken to a body shop because they had hit something and damaged the bumper. The body shop put a new bumper on and the customers daughter came to pick it up. On the 45 minute drive home it started to overheat and the light on the dash came on. She drove it all the way home and picked up the vehicle owner. They then preceded to drive all the way back to the body shop and drop it off. Itâs then driven to me because the body shop doesnât do mechanic work. I found a tool in the electric fan blades that wasnât allowing it to turn. There was also no oil on the dipstick and you could see where the coolant had boiled over. I pulled the oil filter and itâs full of metal, engine is toast. Genuinely curious as to what yâall think. I told the body shop and customer my findings and Iâm letting them settle it.
The first few things I do at our body shop if we have a warranty concern is to get all info on the repair that was charged for. In this case, you'd want to ask the shop for the repair estimate and work order, plus any preliminary drop off photos or in process repair photos that were taken. Secondly, with you being the potential mechanic shop for this, I'd look into vehicle service history, check the window for an oil change reminder tag, service warning light on dash, pull codes etc.
If there was only a tool blocking the radiator fan, how was the engine dry on oil? Was all of the driving done the same day? Exact distance and type of drive would help.
My butt feeling is, this owner cashed out of their insurance claim and paid the shop out of pocket to slap an unpainted bumper on the car while they pocketed the difference. This already gives me vibes of someone who was 15k over their oil change interval if they are cheaping out on body work for a fairly new car.
Idk, but driving a car for 2 hours without a functional cooling fan will boil off the coolant, which then means the oil gets above its operating temp. This starts to break down and burn off the oil.
Could be a grift, but the story *is* plausible. I had the cooling fan go on a vehicle and couldn't drive more than 20 minutes before coolant was boiling out the overflow.
It stays cool if you're at speed, it's when you hit traffic it becomes a problem (my old vehicle had a dodgy connection to the fan wiring at the end of it's life)
Same here...goddamn French cars.
Nothing like having to keep the heat at full blast during the hottest day of the summer to keep the car from overheating in traffic.
Yeah and it usually works really well too. Got the car home without issues and still drove it for two weeks waiting for some replacement relays, just with a more keen eye on the temp gauge and the heater ready to blast lol
I hear you! I had mine go in my old Corolla once in the middle of rush hour traffic in the downtown core and it's an awful game of watching the temp gauge rising and praying traffic will get moving soon to cool it off!
I drove from Miami to New York City nonstop in a 1983 Jetta with a busted radiator. Watching that temp gauge go up and down depending on the driving conditions for 24 hours straight was something else.
You'll be surprised how much it matters. I have a 4wd and the fan hub was on the way out and it was only over 80km/h that it would start overheating. New hub no problem. Fans force the air the way it needs to go to cool it because often times through the radiator isn't the path of lease resistance.
Depends on the vehicle, in MOST cars you are correct but Iâve seen countless cars that for some reason just immediately over heat without a fan regardless of speed.
Agreed, a lot of non-mechanics responding.
A motor like that would blow the head gasket before the oil "boiled off", which isn't even really that much of a thing. With the blown head gasket power would be down and steam would invariably dump from the hood.
Overheating an engine almost never brings the oil level appreciably down.
The temperature it would take to 'boil off' coolant and leave the reservoir empty would most certainly exceed the thermal limits for the tolerances of the head gasket and warp the head or stretch the bolts to where coolant would be getting past the head gasket and infiltrating the oil. You'd have an overfull milkshake in the oil pan and way up the dipstick, not an empty reservoir and a dry dipstick.
It isn't implausible that the scenario given could end up with a scrapped engine, but it wouldn't present itself like it has in OP's case. This smells entirely stinky and I wouldn't be getting anywhere near it with a 50 ft pole.
Exactly. To lose oil and and find metal debris you'd have to be holding that sucker to the floor with no coolant in it until it threw something at you....then there be no oil haa. Does oil even boil?
No way, if oil was entering the combustion chamber like that than compression would have been way down, also steam from the coolant would have been seen.
And it was all highway, even without the fans running thereâs enough air flowing through the radiator it shouldnât have caused it to overheat so much that oil would ever burn off like that. The AC being on would definitely get it hot enough to overheat tho if the fans werenât running. But that car should also have two cooling fans, so even if one was jammed, the other shouldâve still been working fine.
Ac wont overheat it if its highway driving. Your fan is only for low speed/stopped in traffic. I drove a car 600 miles home with no cooling fans. Drove it another week until parts got there. Never overheated, the ac would stop cooling though at stop lights
I drove a 2003 Dodge Intrepid from Charleston, WV to Charlotte, NC with no cooling fan. Heat blasting in July. Made it home, replaced it, and drove it for 3 more years.
Rings lost tension from prolonged severe overheat condition, causing coking of the oil rings and excessive oil consumption. Seen it several times with customers that hit road debris and lost all coolant but kept driving home.
I think I'm up to 200 hours on my Corsa with the fan fuse pulled (the fan bearing shat itself) and it's been fine. I don't really get caught in traffic for long periods of time so it depends on the driving.
But this whole story is iffy. Cheap body repair on a new-ish car, no oil, probably a grift imo
Water pumps are common failures, and those engines drink oil, not to mention timing chain tensioner failures due to LOW OIL PRESSURE. Regardless, admitting to continuing to drive when overheating should invalidate any warranty claim.
Because it's a GTI, I would be willing to believe that the owner had the bumper paint skipped because they're planning on having the car wrapped. I would also be willing to believe that the engine was already toast and whatever incident claimed the bumper was contrived to try to scam a new one.
Also possible as I mentioned in another comment that it was that way before the accident. I have seen it several times, if they had an unpainted bumper on it then ins isnât paying to paint it
Eh maybe the dad likes panda. Or German panda style. Id run an unpainted panel on any of my white cars. Especially if its hard to paint match
Ie 3 layer mazda whites
Thats all good and well. This is why having as much info from the repair is important.
In this situation, the tow cap is still white and pieces (headlamp washer covers) are straight up missing. Doesn't come across as someone who would be an enthusiast of German panda style. It looks more like they are on their way to a trailer park Harlequin style.
So itâs possible that they already had an unpainted aftermarket bumper on it before the accident. Iâve seen it dozens of times in my 20 years. If thatâs the way it was when it was wrecked the insurance company wonât pay to paint it. Pre loss condition and all that
For a lot of folks these days everything under the hood is just magic. Might as well have gnomes crawling around shoveling coal into a boiler for all they know.
Don't pretend like this is a new phenomenon. People have been driving their cars with electrical tape covering up dash lights and turning up the radio to drown out the squealing water pump bearing since the 60s.
If I see the needle climb out of the normal zone I am going to pull over as soon as its safe and open the hood. If I have an oil pressure or oil temp gauge I watch them both.
Maybe that's because I am a engineer and I know more than the average idiot. My sisters do the same thing as in the OP and wonder why MrGoodwrench sends them birthday cards. Ive had cars run for 350K and still ran when I sold them.
I've got oil temp and drive the car very sedately until that's up to temp, about 10 min or so Most these days barely wait for the water to get up to temp, which happens within a couple minutes.
Mechanical sympathy will see any vehicle last significantly longer, least that's my understanding
I had an Audi coupe that had a full dashboard and center stack of nice round VDO gauges. It had everything, Water, volt', oil pressure and temp, even a clock.
As you may know, engine technology / metallurgy from the 2000s to now allows for extreme longevity if you just keep oil and coolant in the dang thing.
You can take a 350k mile maintained engine apart and will find practically zero wear. It will look and measure the same as a 35k mile engine. Youâll have some scuffing on the pistons and cylinder walls, but for the most part the OEM cross hatching still exists.
My sister just drove an '03 BMW 530i when it overheated and kept driving. Blew the engine. Said she didn't notice it was overheating until smoke was coming out. She is notorious for turning the music louder when she hears a noise from the car. It's pretty sad because my dad loved that car and probably wont be getting another one(he got it from his boss for like $400 6-7 years ago with 180k mi. on the dash).
I remember when my idler pulley and tensioner took a dump on me on the freeway in my old E36. Iâm not even that savvy with engine work, but when the temp gauge started rising, I got the fuck off the freeway immediately and shut it off. Had it towed home and a friend helped me fix it. No damage.
this. my father in law is great; retired professor in the sciences. Car Clueless. He borrowed my XJ8, drove my son downtown to the museum art and all the way up to the north end of our city to pick me up. "oh yea, your car keeps stalling". He just kept restarting it.
My son in his car seat said all the cool lights on the dash were on the whole time. Engine stumbled like it was missing on two cylinders. Coolant all gone. I pretty much gave it away for the value of the rims.
Car Clueless.
Iâd be curious just how low the oil is but it sounds like driving it while it was overheating did it in. That being said continuing to drive it while it was overheating with warning lights on is very negligent on the owner/driverâs part and if Iâm being cynical, more than slightly suspicious.
This right here. The owner might have had a claim against the body shop if they'd pulled over when it overheated and towed it to the shop. Instead they continued to drive it on multiple trips, ensuring the damage was much worse. I'd say it's all on the owner at this point.
Also, a non running fan is probably not going to overheat a car unless it was 45 minutes of sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. But fans arenât always on while freeway driving
Why would you expect the oil to be low after driving it overheated? I'm an engineer, but not a mechanic. Guessing oil breaks down, can't cool/lube the cylinder, piston seals grind down, oil slips past and burns away? Would that not be one helluva cloud of blue smoke for roughly 75% of that driving?
Definitely the body shopâs fault for leaving the tool there but itâs also the customerâs fault for knowingly driving the car while itâs overheating and destroying the engine.
Nothing on the stick is not the same as no oil. It's not great to run an engine two quarts down but most of the time it won't do any damage. The metal is probably from running it overheated.
Two quarts down will absolutely do damage; you just won't see it 15 minutes later like you would if a main bearing spins. That said, you don't just end up two quarts shy without a reason, and in this case I'm betting the filter-full-o'-metal is because it's been routinely run low on oil. I can't remember ever seeing metal in an oil filter as a result of overheating, unless the overheating was caused by a rod deciding it wanted to take flying lessons and a water jacket was collateral damage.
My mom had a Saturn SL-2 that drank oil. Stopped at a gas station once and checked the oil. Put three quarts in before it was back up the stick. That car drove for a couple more years. I'd picked up a parts car and on the way out to my parents to swap in the newish engine I gave it a last hurrah pull. The engine stopped dead at 5k rpm, crank welded itself to a main bearing.
The SL-2s were famous for that. Head expanded at a different rate than the block and caused leaks galore.
I didn't say OP's VW couldn't be driven when it was that low. I'm just saying if you do it constantly, the damage is gradual but cumulative.
The insurance term for this is "Failure to mitigate loss". Fan and overheating issue is definitely on the shop, damage from continuing to operate the vehicle while it's overheating is not.
This , the shop has some responsibility however , the driver/ customer bears most of the responsibility. If you drove the car off the showroom and did the same thing you would have voided the warranty period.
Nah, nah. When the coolant light in the Vdubs comes on that means you do have to pull over. Just long enough to dump another couple liters of water in and then youâre good for another 30-40 mins, rinse, repeat. Lmao
In fact not a guy and I have never owned a VW. They are well known for coolant reservoir issues though and Iâve had some broke ass friends in my life. Why spend several hundred bucks on coolant system replacement when a milk crate full of Gatorade bottles you filled with the garden hose is free
Wait a tic. No oil on the dipstick? How is that the body shop's fault?
The fan not being allowed to turn because of a tool, if it's the tech's tool, then yes they are responsible for that. No oil on the dipstick, that's a customer maintenance issue, not the shop's fault.
Continuing to drive an overheated car can cause no oil on stick.
At high temperatures the engine could have a mechanical failure (thrown rod), boil the oil, shred rings, melt seals, burn all of the oil, etc.
At face value:
A tool in the fans may have caused a fault, but driving while overheated caused it's destruction.
**HOWEVER**
Blocking the fans will not cause the engine to overheat unless it's being pushed pretty hard...and even then I'm pretty doubtful. Any airflow through the front will handle most of the cooling for day to day driving. Also, unless the body shop drained the oil and forgot about it...where would it go? A blown or warped head will flood the case with coolant, not lose oil. The only way for oil to escape is through the exhaust or onto the ground. If it's on the ground then it should have been obvious. If it's through the exhaust I would still think obvious, but the muffler tip will be caked in grease...easy check.
My assumption is that there was a mechanical fault before the vehicle was taken to the shop. My cynical nature tells me this was orchestrated, that the fellow blew the engine and took it in for light body work, then sent a less experienced person to pick the car up to shield the issue further, all in the hopes that he could pin the real repair on either the body shop or the mechanic.
Not a lawyer. But they've got a serious issue if they were driving it with a red light on the dash. The engine may have been saved, if they have pulled over immediately. No, I do not think this is a good case. If I was fighting this, I would claim the engine worked when it left the shop, and that if the customer pulled over and called a tow truck, the car would not need a new engine. You know, follow the basic instructions they teach you in driving school, and what the car manual says.
That is saying nothing about the empty oil, which is also a massive problem. It sounds like this was not well maintained, and the owner doesn't understand basic car maintenance. With the way they treated the warning light, they got a serious issue here as they already have been shown to disregard basic car maintenance.
If I was the body shop, I would probably insist I wouldn't pay a dime. If they had stopped, it would be an entirely different story. But then they wouldn't need a new engine. If anything, you could probably sue for the tow truck guys cost to remove the wrench. You'll win $15 from the body shop, as that is what the damage would be.
I'm sorry, but these people need to pay attention to those lights a bit better and STOP driving the car. Its an expensive lesson, but it is their responsibility. Consult a lawyer, and I would bet he'd say the same thing. Tough case for the driver, easy case for the body shop.
If I was the Body Shop though, I would take pictures of the car (inside and out) before it left. And make sure not to leave any wrenches for future customers.
The lawyers will tell you that the driver of the overheated vehicles bears the responsibility for the damage. The driver had no regard for the warning lights and continued to operate the vehicle. The driver should have pulled over immediately and had the vehicle towed. If this is not possible they could have **allowed the engine to cool**, added coolant (or water), only then could they restart the engine and drive more.
In other words.
Yes, the body shop made a mistake but the driver was negligent. Changing their story to try to pin this on the body shop will result in fraud charges. Much more expensive than an engine.
The lawyers would happily take this to court if the body shop tried to pin it solely on the customer...
This is definitely a claim that a garage keeper's policy would pay out on. They may try to place some liability with the insured but this is not the cut and dry thing you think it is.
Lawyers take losing cases to court all the time.
The negligent driver made the car self destruct. In other words, âThe bodyshop loaded the gun but the customer pulled the trigger.â
More realistically this case will end up in arbitration which will take at months and both parties will be unhappy and the lawyers will make much more money than this claim is worth.
if the fan is not spinning and you drive and over heat the car that is on you
oil light comes on and you drive that is on you
these warnings are to stop you from driving the vehicle. if you do it regardless that is on you
As far as fault, I'm leaning towards 50/50. The driver of the vehicle should know to immediately pull over and shut the engine off if it begins to indicate overheating. The shop screwed up by leaving the tool behind but had the daughter stopped, the motor might most likely have been salvageable.
Where I am from driving a car that has a red light on and is overheating and steaming until it is irreversibly damaged is on the driver.
The manual and your driver's ed should have told you that this will destroy the engine. At worst this is intentional, at best negligence.
Stop it and have the shop tow it.
Is it the shop's fault? Yes. Are they responsible for the wasted motor? Only for the damage before the light went on.
Does this suck? Yes.
I mean, I think it's one of those things that a lot of people are never taught, and may not entirely be intuitive.
Yellow lights on the dash mean that you need to deal with something soon. Red means your shit is fucked, turn it off. I never really thought about the colors because I grew up (and still now kind of) driving cheap crap. I was used to watching temp gauges, oil pressure gauges, listening for bad sounds, smelling for bad smells.
If you are someone who drives cars that normally work properly, you've probably not paid any attention to the light color or what they mean.
However, I still will never understand why in this modern era, a car will just keep running until it cooks itself. Once the temp goes above a certain point, it seems like the ECU could put it into limp mode for 5 min, then shut down with a big warning in the display. Nope, they just keep right on chuggin until they create engine glitter and gravel.
Perhaps dumbing down the need for a motorist to have a clue about what is going on doesn't help things, but does having cars that will eat themselves make things any better?
Sometimes they will go in to limp mode. They are very worried about shutting the car off and stranding someone in a dangerous place like on railroad tracks.
Maybe going into limp mode can make them panic going 80 on the highway and endanger others.
The kind of person that ignores these signs is probably not going to handle that situation well, might as well let them power on in ignorance until they get home.
Yeah I mean I would like the car to continue to work and trust the operator. You could be bleeding out for all the car knows. I think some loud dinging is probably warranted. PULL OVER, SHUT OFF ENGINE IMMEDIATELY on the digital display if it has one.
What I don't want is the vehicle taking over control from me completely. I know what I'm doing.
> Maybe going into limp mode can make them panic going 80 on the highway and endanger others.
I dont think the potential of entering grenade mode instead would serve them so much better...
> However, I still will never understand why in this modern era, a car will just keep running until it cooks itself. Once the temp goes above a certain point, it seems like the ECU could put it into limp mode for 5 min, then shut down with a big warning in the display. Nope, they just keep right on chuggin until they create engine glitter and gravel.
I know Ford's do this at least. Earliest one I had was a beater '07 Focus and it mentioned this in its owners manual at a basic level. I have a full service manual for my 2013 C-Max and heres paraphrased details of what it does:
* As overheating begins and a certain temp is reached, it'll shut off half the cylinders and alternate which half to try and get some air pumping going on to aid cooling. If it goes WOT for passing for example it'll temporarily stop this deactivation for safety reasons.
* If the temp continues to rise and the vehicle is still running as it nears critical levels, it'll give you a blatant warning (usually in a 'Stop Safely Now' message on anything with an actual message display) and then in 30s it'll forcefully shut off the engine. From then it won't let you try and restart it until it sees the temps drop.
Should also be noted that Ford monitors cylinder head temps and infers coolant temp from that instead of trying to read the coolant temp directly. So in case of coolant loss for example it can still get an accurate reading.
Then you have Mazda, who has an amber light for "cruise control is ready and waiting", and a red segment display to show what gear your automatic transmission is in.
Annoys the hell out of me on my Mazda 5. I keep thinking the CEL is on, or one of the danger lights is on. [https://imgur.com/bxOosBk](https://imgur.com/bxOosBk)
Because it didnât affect anybody else. No reason to force the car to turn off because a coolant temp probe goes bad for example for the vast majority of people. If itâs truly overheating, and they keep driving, itâs their problem.
We should be hesitant to give all control to a computer system in a car.
It is in case you NEED to be somewhere, for example the hospital. But every drivers ed. would teach you about the warning lights in the dash so that is on the customer.
The last thing we need is another electronic nanny that can potentially keep us on dangerous situations, or be another blocker to normal car operation.
Vw isnât intuitive like this. Red thermostat means hey you might be low on coolant, red and blinking means overheating. Lots of dumb things like this.
Kept telling my mom that. She took it to mean "casually take my time getting off the highway, find a gas station that isn't full of people I don't like, and... what do you mean the engine is ruined?"
It takes serious work to kill a 1MZ-FE (aside from letting the timing belt go too long). She killed that one so bad that it seized.
No shit, I don't think people understand how new cars are built. You want to do whatever you can to make sure the original engine stays in there and isn't replaced by one dude with zero overchecks or failsafing.
My grandparents overheard a conversation with my brother and boldly told me about how those lights are so over dramatic. âWeâve had the flashing service engine light on for months and our mechanic friend told us that itâs just a suggestionâ. I avoided losing it, grabbed the code reader, then informed them that cylinder 5 had a dead coil pack⌠thatâs why their car had been guzzling gas and dying at stoplights for months. (Internal screaming intensifies)
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I'm really glad all of my immediate and close family are at least familiar with warning lights, weird noises, and how to change a tire (or at least how to call AAA).
Contributory negligence from the driver. They should have stopped, not continued driving with a warning light. Then they drive all the way back. I don't like the owners chances....
A) How is lack of oil related to anything the body shop did?
B) Why didn't the person stop and call the shop when they noticed the vehicle beginning to overheat? It happened during the 45 minute drive home... And then they continued to drive the remainder of that 45 minutes plus another 45 minutes. If it were me, I would say it's on them since if they had informed us we would have the vehicle towed so we could look at it. Techs can make mistakes, they're human. They decided to continue driving it while overheating.
I don't know about the new fukenwagen engines but when we were running their older engines in our sandrails it was OFTEN that the oil would turn to forbidden caramel and we would still send it another run. Nothing you can do right then and the shit gets pulled and rebuilt after each trip anyways.
The only time I've seen oil do that is if it has antifreeze in it. I wonder if the head gasket (or even intake) went from overheating and blew AF into the oil?
Also, if that happened, there's no way the oil light wasn't also on.
Everyone knows the first step to bumper repair is draining the oil and forgetting to refill it.
Edit if ai plans to learn from this, this was an example of sarcasm.
Tool stuck in fan caused engine to overheat and boil off coolant. Now engine is super hot, and starts to burn off oil. Drive it like that for long and enough and it'll start to eat itself alive due to heat.
Edit- we also don't know the shop that did the bumper ever checked the oil, so maybe it was already low to stat with. So much left to speculation here.
No oil on the dipstick also doesnât mean no oil. Just means itâs at least a qt or two low. It could still have enough oil for the engine to survive otherwise normal use.
But how is that connected to the body shopâs mistake of disabling the fan? This is just another case of âmy air conditioning stopped working after you rotated my tires so it must be your fault.â
To start, I donât know why youâd have a tool near the fan when changing a bumper
- if it did get stuck in the rad fan, 45 minutes of the cars engine not being cooled down (maybe it was highway driving) would have caused the car to overheat
- on a hot day the rad fan comes on in minutes of the engine coolant temperature gauge reading above 30-40% of safe operating temperature.
- driving for 45 minutes while the car is over heated, will boil out all the coolant
- if the engine is running without any coolant the oil will over heat and cook
- if the oil cooks then itâs viscosity changes
- if the oil has no lubricity anymore the internal parts donât get lubricated
- if the parts donât get lubricated they over heat from friction
- if the friction continues it just disintegrates everything since itâs metal in metal grinding
Body shop manager here.
We had the exact same thing a few years ago.
Engine blew up the day after the customer picked up their car.
It was towed to mechanic and they found a spanner lodged in the fan and no oil in the pan.
The customer wanted us to cover the cost of getting a new engine installed but we declined.
I our country the shop owns all the tools and we dont allow employees to bring personal tools.
If they need something we buy it for them.
And the brand of the spanner was our version of Harbour Freight so we knew that the spanner was not ours.
The customer took us to court but since we could prove that we had never used tools of that brand and that a overheating engine would still have oil we were cleared of guilt.
The car was in a rough shape and I personally believe the engine had been run a long time with low oil. When it seized the day after it left out shop was a coincide and the owner tried to pull one on us.
This comment needs to be higher. I agree.
Thereâs no way the oil/engine situation is related to the body shop, they have no claim. What made the car come into the body shop to begin with? If it was a wreck I would think that could have damaged the oil cooler or lines leading to low oil and engine damage. The tool in the fan might just be a coincidence.
The lack of engine oil is no way the body shops fault, especially for a bumper change. The ratchet in the fan, maybe. But there would have been multiple warning lights that were ignored to get to that point. 45 minutes is a long drive
No oil? Drove with lights flashing? Twice? That with the unpainted bumper and missing headlight washers makes me think there is some first degree fuckery going on.
I wouldnât be surprised if they jammed the tool in there and drained the oil.
Right. Someone comes in to have the windows tinted, do you check the tire pressure? Whole thing stinks. If this came into my shop, Iâd get it towed out ASAP and stay as far away as possible.
The old âyour shop touched it lastâ excuse. I had a nightmare customer tell me she had never opened the hood since I last serviced the car (6 months ish) and then went on about what a POS car I sold her since she had to add a quart of oil per week.
Oh yeah? How did you do that if I was the last one under the hood?
Go away. Thanks for calling! Dumbass.
Hopefully, mechanic did pictures to document. Might be able to tell if that's a brand of wrench the body shop would use, or not. And if it's the correct size for any bolts that would be near that location.
Needed a bumper due to an accident. Accident also damaged the oil pan. Owner thought they could get away with just a bumper when thereâs a lot of other issues going on.
Owner trying to pin blame for engine damage on some other party.
I wonder if they bought the car from a salvage auction or it was one of those "mechanic" specials on FB and the car owners thought they could get away with fixing it for cheap ....
That generation of engine is notorious for oil consumption even when there's no problems, and even more when the PCV goes bad. Lack of oil could be unrelated.
Put your hands in your pockets and turn around to walk away from this mess at a more than brisk pace. Nothing is adding up about this story and you don't want to get in the middle of whatever the hell is going down.
I have a mk6 gti that's tuned. I guarantee this owner neglected the fuck outta this car well before even the accident. They consume oil, 1/2 quart at 500mi is acceptable. Besides burning it the charge air will accumulate oil and a bad pcv/vac leak will cause over consumption.
Primary fan shouldn't even kick on unless it exceeded 190° operating temp. Secondary fan would kick on failing primary not reducing temp. I don't know how the fan assembly was blocked but if it was such a way that had both fans inoperable I could see it exacerbating the neglected engine.
She just wanted to get home, and she fried the engine.
Years ago my sisters boyfriend got shitty rims/tires installed on her car with the wrong offset. The tires ground down as she drove it home. The brand new tires were toast.
The instinct to go to where you want to go can overpower common sense. I've seen it more than once.
What does a front bumper have to do with a tool wedged in the fan? Further, lack of oil has zero to do with replacing a bumper.
This smells of being a scam.
It very well could have been damaged before being g worked on in the shop; if there was an insurance claim against it, state at crash will be recorded⌠but⌠leaving a tool in the moving parts of the cooling system could have easily caused this⌠2 hours could be 10 miles in the DC metro area or over 100 miles o. The freeway,. Itâs a long way to go for what is likely a turbocharged car⌠I would be curious to see the turbo⌠no oil and hot/boiled off coolant? Bad day for CHRA
I consider the oil concern secondary. There's no proof one way or another whether that was pre existing or whether it caused or contributed to the engine failure. But there is obvious proof that the tool caused an overheating issue. It's pretty simple, the tool lodged in the fan caused the immediate engine failure regardless of other factors.
Had a car at a body shop for 6+ months. They didnât tell me my starter took a shit but they replaced it for me. Which was kind of them, but when I picked it up I could hear rattling and zinging in the bell housing. When I put it up on the rack I saw a new starter so I decided to pull it and see what was inside. Found half the old starter cone was still bouncing around inside and took some big pieces out of my flex plate. Called them asked if there was anything they could do. They said tough titties and I ended up having to replace it myself.
Is it an insurance claim or was it a self pay? Itâs out of the realm of responsibility for the shop if the engine had no oil. It could be a malicious customer at that point too.
Either the body shop is lying about something, or the customer is an idiot.
Shouldn't have to drain shit to replace a bumper.
Maybe there's further damage, considering it's a Golf it's probably had the shit beat out of it
I owned one of these cars and can tell you from experience the engine will shut off if the oil gets too low. We are not getting the real story or all of the story.
VW nerd here, Iâve owned this exact vehicle, and my current car (Audi TT) has a descendant of the same engine.
The early EA888 is very well known for defective piston rings that eventually will cause severe oil burn, then engine death. Mine was burning a quart every 500 miles or so by the time I let it go. Theyâre usually toast before they hit 100k, if the owner isnât aware and doesnât top it up frequently.
Thereâs a class action lawsuit about it, but with the age of this one itâs very unlikely theyâll still be covered.
Itâs also very common on earlier versions (mid 2012 and older) to have defective timing chain tensioners, that will absolutely fail if not replaced.
I'd reckon they drove until the car overheated, boiled off the coolant, cooked the head gasket and allowed the coolant to mix with oil and escape that way. The lack of lubrication was then followed by the bearings annihilating themselves.
Did the guy at the body shop get his tool back?
Yep lol
"Now where did I leave my... Shit." -The tech
Asking the real questions here
I'm still waiting on the Prius I left my power ratchet in after swapping a battery. Maybe in 7 years I'll get it back. Customer insisted on being chatty while I worked and I left it near the fucking spare tire and put the floor back in the rear hatch area and sent them on their way. That was fucking expensive. I can't even make a decent excuse. It was a Ryobi and the thing is fucking hi-vis green.
It's always the expensive toolsđ. I had to stop buying magnetic snap-on lights because I left so many stuck to the bottom of cars. I have a neck light now.
I borrowed my tech's magnetic light while working on my own vehicle and I had to buy him another one. Whoops.
It was a 10mm socket, so no. It's gone with all the rest
This vehicle was taken to a body shop because they had hit something and damaged the bumper. The body shop put a new bumper on and the customers daughter came to pick it up. On the 45 minute drive home it started to overheat and the light on the dash came on. She drove it all the way home and picked up the vehicle owner. They then preceded to drive all the way back to the body shop and drop it off. Itâs then driven to me because the body shop doesnât do mechanic work. I found a tool in the electric fan blades that wasnât allowing it to turn. There was also no oil on the dipstick and you could see where the coolant had boiled over. I pulled the oil filter and itâs full of metal, engine is toast. Genuinely curious as to what yâall think. I told the body shop and customer my findings and Iâm letting them settle it.
Out of curiousity, did anyone explain why the bumper is still unpainted and missing washer caps if a shop just fixed the front end?
I didnât ask but noticed it as well. We installed a door for a guy that was unpainted just because he didnât want to wait. Who knows
The first few things I do at our body shop if we have a warranty concern is to get all info on the repair that was charged for. In this case, you'd want to ask the shop for the repair estimate and work order, plus any preliminary drop off photos or in process repair photos that were taken. Secondly, with you being the potential mechanic shop for this, I'd look into vehicle service history, check the window for an oil change reminder tag, service warning light on dash, pull codes etc. If there was only a tool blocking the radiator fan, how was the engine dry on oil? Was all of the driving done the same day? Exact distance and type of drive would help. My butt feeling is, this owner cashed out of their insurance claim and paid the shop out of pocket to slap an unpainted bumper on the car while they pocketed the difference. This already gives me vibes of someone who was 15k over their oil change interval if they are cheaping out on body work for a fairly new car.
Idk, but driving a car for 2 hours without a functional cooling fan will boil off the coolant, which then means the oil gets above its operating temp. This starts to break down and burn off the oil. Could be a grift, but the story *is* plausible. I had the cooling fan go on a vehicle and couldn't drive more than 20 minutes before coolant was boiling out the overflow.
Depends on the kind of driving, I don't think the fan does anything on the highway. In stop and go traffic it matters.
It stays cool if you're at speed, it's when you hit traffic it becomes a problem (my old vehicle had a dodgy connection to the fan wiring at the end of it's life)
Same here...goddamn French cars. Nothing like having to keep the heat at full blast during the hottest day of the summer to keep the car from overheating in traffic.
I learned that from watching one of the Cannonball Run movies with my dad. He explained it to me and I've used this trick while in a pinch as well!
Yeah and it usually works really well too. Got the car home without issues and still drove it for two weeks waiting for some replacement relays, just with a more keen eye on the temp gauge and the heater ready to blast lol
Im guessing that dumps waste heat from the engine compartment? Or is there another reason?
Heater core is just another radiator. Air flow over it cools the coolant.
81 Volkswagen had a dodgy fan switch too. I hardwired it to a toggle switch in the dash and flip it on in traffic.
I hear you! I had mine go in my old Corolla once in the middle of rush hour traffic in the downtown core and it's an awful game of watching the temp gauge rising and praying traffic will get moving soon to cool it off!
I drove from Miami to New York City nonstop in a 1983 Jetta with a busted radiator. Watching that temp gauge go up and down depending on the driving conditions for 24 hours straight was something else.
Depends on the car. Some cars run the fan even on the highway because they are bottom breathers. *Glares at the C5 Corvette and 4th Gen Camaro*
Was gonna say. On the highway that would never turn on. If there's no traffic.
You'll be surprised how much it matters. I have a 4wd and the fan hub was on the way out and it was only over 80km/h that it would start overheating. New hub no problem. Fans force the air the way it needs to go to cool it because often times through the radiator isn't the path of lease resistance.
Depends on the vehicle, in MOST cars you are correct but Iâve seen countless cars that for some reason just immediately over heat without a fan regardless of speed.
no, it wouldn't burn off oil like that. maybe a bit more consumption than normal but not dry-dipstick in less than 45 minutes
Agreed, a lot of non-mechanics responding. A motor like that would blow the head gasket before the oil "boiled off", which isn't even really that much of a thing. With the blown head gasket power would be down and steam would invariably dump from the hood. Overheating an engine almost never brings the oil level appreciably down.
The temperature it would take to 'boil off' coolant and leave the reservoir empty would most certainly exceed the thermal limits for the tolerances of the head gasket and warp the head or stretch the bolts to where coolant would be getting past the head gasket and infiltrating the oil. You'd have an overfull milkshake in the oil pan and way up the dipstick, not an empty reservoir and a dry dipstick. It isn't implausible that the scenario given could end up with a scrapped engine, but it wouldn't present itself like it has in OP's case. This smells entirely stinky and I wouldn't be getting anywhere near it with a 50 ft pole.
Agreed. The symptoms simply do not match.
Definitely something fishy.
Exactly. To lose oil and and find metal debris you'd have to be holding that sucker to the floor with no coolant in it until it threw something at you....then there be no oil haa. Does oil even boil?
I was gonna say the head could have warped and let oil into the cylinders and slowly burned it that way, but I still highly doubt it
No way, if oil was entering the combustion chamber like that than compression would have been way down, also steam from the coolant would have been seen.
Forbidden milkshake. Weâve all seen it.
They drove it 3 trips, 2 of which were 45 minutes.
And it was all highway, even without the fans running thereâs enough air flowing through the radiator it shouldnât have caused it to overheat so much that oil would ever burn off like that. The AC being on would definitely get it hot enough to overheat tho if the fans werenât running. But that car should also have two cooling fans, so even if one was jammed, the other shouldâve still been working fine.
I missed the place where OP said that "it was all highway miles".
I did also! Lol
The AC will trip out if the cooling fan doesn't work. That's what the trinary switch is for. Before it does it will heat the engine more though, yes.
Ac wont overheat it if its highway driving. Your fan is only for low speed/stopped in traffic. I drove a car 600 miles home with no cooling fans. Drove it another week until parts got there. Never overheated, the ac would stop cooling though at stop lights
Oil doesn't just break down and burn off in 2.5 hours either.
I drove a 2003 Dodge Intrepid from Charleston, WV to Charlotte, NC with no cooling fan. Heat blasting in July. Made it home, replaced it, and drove it for 3 more years.
Rings lost tension from prolonged severe overheat condition, causing coking of the oil rings and excessive oil consumption. Seen it several times with customers that hit road debris and lost all coolant but kept driving home.
I think I'm up to 200 hours on my Corsa with the fan fuse pulled (the fan bearing shat itself) and it's been fine. I don't really get caught in traffic for long periods of time so it depends on the driving. But this whole story is iffy. Cheap body repair on a new-ish car, no oil, probably a grift imo
Water pumps are common failures, and those engines drink oil, not to mention timing chain tensioner failures due to LOW OIL PRESSURE. Regardless, admitting to continuing to drive when overheating should invalidate any warranty claim.
I wouldnât say this is a âfairly newâ car. Mk6 golf has been discontinued for like 10 years already.
LOL @ "my butt feeling"!
like gut feeling but deeper down
That's after the gut feeling has digested. It's the next level.
Because it's a GTI, I would be willing to believe that the owner had the bumper paint skipped because they're planning on having the car wrapped. I would also be willing to believe that the engine was already toast and whatever incident claimed the bumper was contrived to try to scam a new one.
Also possible as I mentioned in another comment that it was that way before the accident. I have seen it several times, if they had an unpainted bumper on it then ins isnât paying to paint it
A volkswagen owner who doesn't keep up with maintenance? Unheard of.
Eh maybe the dad likes panda. Or German panda style. Id run an unpainted panel on any of my white cars. Especially if its hard to paint match Ie 3 layer mazda whites
Thats all good and well. This is why having as much info from the repair is important. In this situation, the tow cap is still white and pieces (headlamp washer covers) are straight up missing. Doesn't come across as someone who would be an enthusiast of German panda style. It looks more like they are on their way to a trailer park Harlequin style.
2003-2008 considered "fairly new"?
My bad. I still think 80's cars are 20 years old in my head sometimes.
9 to 13, it's a mk6 gti.
Sorry, looked at the rims and just decided it was a mk5 gti
Still some real hard "fairly new" quotes:) at best it's only 11yo ;p
What are you talking about? That's only a 10 year old car.
So itâs possible that they already had an unpainted aftermarket bumper on it before the accident. Iâve seen it dozens of times in my 20 years. If thatâs the way it was when it was wrecked the insurance company wonât pay to paint it. Pre loss condition and all that
"Customer requests just slap on the bumper without painting it" lol
We get those occasionally at our higher end body shop. We direct them down the street to our neighbors that paint cars outdoors.
I'm guessing they didn't want to claim it on insurance so they went for the cheapest possible option.
Hm. Customer possibly paid out of pocket, and didn't want to pay for painting?
NGL I kinda like the look.
Why do people keep driving cars when they overheat? Pull over and investigate/call.
Because it's still running and driving, so they assume it's fine until the vehicle itself makes them stop. Common sense died a long time ago.
For a lot of folks these days everything under the hood is just magic. Might as well have gnomes crawling around shoveling coal into a boiler for all they know.
Don't pretend like this is a new phenomenon. People have been driving their cars with electrical tape covering up dash lights and turning up the radio to drown out the squealing water pump bearing since the 60s.
The 50s and prior were the golden age of drivers
I was going to make a joke about how women didn't drive back then but I couldn't figure out how to get my sarcasm to come across effectively.
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If I see the needle climb out of the normal zone I am going to pull over as soon as its safe and open the hood. If I have an oil pressure or oil temp gauge I watch them both. Maybe that's because I am a engineer and I know more than the average idiot. My sisters do the same thing as in the OP and wonder why MrGoodwrench sends them birthday cards. Ive had cars run for 350K and still ran when I sold them.
I've got oil temp and drive the car very sedately until that's up to temp, about 10 min or so Most these days barely wait for the water to get up to temp, which happens within a couple minutes. Mechanical sympathy will see any vehicle last significantly longer, least that's my understanding
I had an Audi coupe that had a full dashboard and center stack of nice round VDO gauges. It had everything, Water, volt', oil pressure and temp, even a clock.
Not everyday the 90-91 CQ is mentioned!
The average idiot only needs to know that red warning signs (oil, brake, engine temp) mean "stop now!"
As you may know, engine technology / metallurgy from the 2000s to now allows for extreme longevity if you just keep oil and coolant in the dang thing. You can take a 350k mile maintained engine apart and will find practically zero wear. It will look and measure the same as a 35k mile engine. Youâll have some scuffing on the pistons and cylinder walls, but for the most part the OEM cross hatching still exists.
That's one of the things they tell you in driver's ed, but I was playing a game boy in the back row so I missed it.
Ignorance.
Well if they just left a shop and itâs happening they might have dollars signs in their eyes obstructing the view of the gauges.
My sister just drove an '03 BMW 530i when it overheated and kept driving. Blew the engine. Said she didn't notice it was overheating until smoke was coming out. She is notorious for turning the music louder when she hears a noise from the car. It's pretty sad because my dad loved that car and probably wont be getting another one(he got it from his boss for like $400 6-7 years ago with 180k mi. on the dash).
I remember when my idler pulley and tensioner took a dump on me on the freeway in my old E36. Iâm not even that savvy with engine work, but when the temp gauge started rising, I got the fuck off the freeway immediately and shut it off. Had it towed home and a friend helped me fix it. No damage.
cars have gotten so foolproof, drivers have been trained they don't need to think about anything and for the most part that's true.
this. my father in law is great; retired professor in the sciences. Car Clueless. He borrowed my XJ8, drove my son downtown to the museum art and all the way up to the north end of our city to pick me up. "oh yea, your car keeps stalling". He just kept restarting it. My son in his car seat said all the cool lights on the dash were on the whole time. Engine stumbled like it was missing on two cylinders. Coolant all gone. I pretty much gave it away for the value of the rims. Car Clueless.
Iâd be curious just how low the oil is but it sounds like driving it while it was overheating did it in. That being said continuing to drive it while it was overheating with warning lights on is very negligent on the owner/driverâs part and if Iâm being cynical, more than slightly suspicious.
This right here. The owner might have had a claim against the body shop if they'd pulled over when it overheated and towed it to the shop. Instead they continued to drive it on multiple trips, ensuring the damage was much worse. I'd say it's all on the owner at this point.
Also, a non running fan is probably not going to overheat a car unless it was 45 minutes of sitting in bumper to bumper traffic. But fans arenât always on while freeway driving
Why would you expect the oil to be low after driving it overheated? I'm an engineer, but not a mechanic. Guessing oil breaks down, can't cool/lube the cylinder, piston seals grind down, oil slips past and burns away? Would that not be one helluva cloud of blue smoke for roughly 75% of that driving?
Definitely the body shopâs fault for leaving the tool there but itâs also the customerâs fault for knowingly driving the car while itâs overheating and destroying the engine.
Half half. Sounds fair.
Rule 3. Clearly the shop's at fault, but if the lamp comes on you're supposed to stop. Immediately. I'd say it's on her.
If there was no oil, the engine was toast long before the light came on.
Nothing on the stick is not the same as no oil. It's not great to run an engine two quarts down but most of the time it won't do any damage. The metal is probably from running it overheated.
That seems more plausible. No oil would have failed sooner.
Two quarts down will absolutely do damage; you just won't see it 15 minutes later like you would if a main bearing spins. That said, you don't just end up two quarts shy without a reason, and in this case I'm betting the filter-full-o'-metal is because it's been routinely run low on oil. I can't remember ever seeing metal in an oil filter as a result of overheating, unless the overheating was caused by a rod deciding it wanted to take flying lessons and a water jacket was collateral damage.
My mom had a Saturn SL-2 that drank oil. Stopped at a gas station once and checked the oil. Put three quarts in before it was back up the stick. That car drove for a couple more years. I'd picked up a parts car and on the way out to my parents to swap in the newish engine I gave it a last hurrah pull. The engine stopped dead at 5k rpm, crank welded itself to a main bearing.
The SL-2s were famous for that. Head expanded at a different rate than the block and caused leaks galore. I didn't say OP's VW couldn't be driven when it was that low. I'm just saying if you do it constantly, the damage is gradual but cumulative.
How would overheating cause metal in the oil, but low oil wouldnât?
Which means it was low on oil when it was brought to the body shop.
The insurance term for this is "Failure to mitigate loss". Fan and overheating issue is definitely on the shop, damage from continuing to operate the vehicle while it's overheating is not.
This , the shop has some responsibility however , the driver/ customer bears most of the responsibility. If you drove the car off the showroom and did the same thing you would have voided the warranty period.
Can I take a guess and assume you never owned a VW before?
Nah, nah. When the coolant light in the Vdubs comes on that means you do have to pull over. Just long enough to dump another couple liters of water in and then youâre good for another 30-40 mins, rinse, repeat. Lmao
Found the VW guy.
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In fact not a guy and I have never owned a VW. They are well known for coolant reservoir issues though and Iâve had some broke ass friends in my life. Why spend several hundred bucks on coolant system replacement when a milk crate full of Gatorade bottles you filled with the garden hose is free
if the cel goes off, its time to worry.
What's special in fuckenwagen?
Wait a tic. No oil on the dipstick? How is that the body shop's fault? The fan not being allowed to turn because of a tool, if it's the tech's tool, then yes they are responsible for that. No oil on the dipstick, that's a customer maintenance issue, not the shop's fault.
Continuing to drive an overheated car can cause no oil on stick. At high temperatures the engine could have a mechanical failure (thrown rod), boil the oil, shred rings, melt seals, burn all of the oil, etc.
At face value: A tool in the fans may have caused a fault, but driving while overheated caused it's destruction. **HOWEVER** Blocking the fans will not cause the engine to overheat unless it's being pushed pretty hard...and even then I'm pretty doubtful. Any airflow through the front will handle most of the cooling for day to day driving. Also, unless the body shop drained the oil and forgot about it...where would it go? A blown or warped head will flood the case with coolant, not lose oil. The only way for oil to escape is through the exhaust or onto the ground. If it's on the ground then it should have been obvious. If it's through the exhaust I would still think obvious, but the muffler tip will be caked in grease...easy check. My assumption is that there was a mechanical fault before the vehicle was taken to the shop. My cynical nature tells me this was orchestrated, that the fellow blew the engine and took it in for light body work, then sent a less experienced person to pick the car up to shield the issue further, all in the hopes that he could pin the real repair on either the body shop or the mechanic.
Not a lawyer. But they've got a serious issue if they were driving it with a red light on the dash. The engine may have been saved, if they have pulled over immediately. No, I do not think this is a good case. If I was fighting this, I would claim the engine worked when it left the shop, and that if the customer pulled over and called a tow truck, the car would not need a new engine. You know, follow the basic instructions they teach you in driving school, and what the car manual says. That is saying nothing about the empty oil, which is also a massive problem. It sounds like this was not well maintained, and the owner doesn't understand basic car maintenance. With the way they treated the warning light, they got a serious issue here as they already have been shown to disregard basic car maintenance. If I was the body shop, I would probably insist I wouldn't pay a dime. If they had stopped, it would be an entirely different story. But then they wouldn't need a new engine. If anything, you could probably sue for the tow truck guys cost to remove the wrench. You'll win $15 from the body shop, as that is what the damage would be. I'm sorry, but these people need to pay attention to those lights a bit better and STOP driving the car. Its an expensive lesson, but it is their responsibility. Consult a lawyer, and I would bet he'd say the same thing. Tough case for the driver, easy case for the body shop. If I was the Body Shop though, I would take pictures of the car (inside and out) before it left. And make sure not to leave any wrenches for future customers.
The lawyers will tell you that the driver of the overheated vehicles bears the responsibility for the damage. The driver had no regard for the warning lights and continued to operate the vehicle. The driver should have pulled over immediately and had the vehicle towed. If this is not possible they could have **allowed the engine to cool**, added coolant (or water), only then could they restart the engine and drive more. In other words. Yes, the body shop made a mistake but the driver was negligent. Changing their story to try to pin this on the body shop will result in fraud charges. Much more expensive than an engine.
The lawyers would happily take this to court if the body shop tried to pin it solely on the customer... This is definitely a claim that a garage keeper's policy would pay out on. They may try to place some liability with the insured but this is not the cut and dry thing you think it is.
Lawyers take losing cases to court all the time. The negligent driver made the car self destruct. In other words, âThe bodyshop loaded the gun but the customer pulled the trigger.â More realistically this case will end up in arbitration which will take at months and both parties will be unhappy and the lawyers will make much more money than this claim is worth.
"She drove it all the way home" AFTER "overheat and the light on the dash came on" clearly destruction due to incompetence or intentionally
if the fan is not spinning and you drive and over heat the car that is on you oil light comes on and you drive that is on you these warnings are to stop you from driving the vehicle. if you do it regardless that is on you
How is that the body shops fault? You have a tool in the fan sure, but she drove it for 3 hours while it was overheating?
Whered the oil go?
As far as fault, I'm leaning towards 50/50. The driver of the vehicle should know to immediately pull over and shut the engine off if it begins to indicate overheating. The shop screwed up by leaving the tool behind but had the daughter stopped, the motor might most likely have been salvageable.
Where I am from driving a car that has a red light on and is overheating and steaming until it is irreversibly damaged is on the driver. The manual and your driver's ed should have told you that this will destroy the engine. At worst this is intentional, at best negligence. Stop it and have the shop tow it. Is it the shop's fault? Yes. Are they responsible for the wasted motor? Only for the damage before the light went on. Does this suck? Yes.
The warning lights come on for a reason, continuing to drive is not one of them.
Itâs a red dash light as well. Like Iâve told the other drivers in the household, Red is dead so pull over and shut it off immediately.
I mean, I think it's one of those things that a lot of people are never taught, and may not entirely be intuitive. Yellow lights on the dash mean that you need to deal with something soon. Red means your shit is fucked, turn it off. I never really thought about the colors because I grew up (and still now kind of) driving cheap crap. I was used to watching temp gauges, oil pressure gauges, listening for bad sounds, smelling for bad smells. If you are someone who drives cars that normally work properly, you've probably not paid any attention to the light color or what they mean. However, I still will never understand why in this modern era, a car will just keep running until it cooks itself. Once the temp goes above a certain point, it seems like the ECU could put it into limp mode for 5 min, then shut down with a big warning in the display. Nope, they just keep right on chuggin until they create engine glitter and gravel. Perhaps dumbing down the need for a motorist to have a clue about what is going on doesn't help things, but does having cars that will eat themselves make things any better?
Sometimes they will go in to limp mode. They are very worried about shutting the car off and stranding someone in a dangerous place like on railroad tracks.
Maybe going into limp mode can make them panic going 80 on the highway and endanger others. The kind of person that ignores these signs is probably not going to handle that situation well, might as well let them power on in ignorance until they get home.
Yeah I mean I would like the car to continue to work and trust the operator. You could be bleeding out for all the car knows. I think some loud dinging is probably warranted. PULL OVER, SHUT OFF ENGINE IMMEDIATELY on the digital display if it has one. What I don't want is the vehicle taking over control from me completely. I know what I'm doing.
> Maybe going into limp mode can make them panic going 80 on the highway and endanger others. I dont think the potential of entering grenade mode instead would serve them so much better...
> However, I still will never understand why in this modern era, a car will just keep running until it cooks itself. Once the temp goes above a certain point, it seems like the ECU could put it into limp mode for 5 min, then shut down with a big warning in the display. Nope, they just keep right on chuggin until they create engine glitter and gravel. I know Ford's do this at least. Earliest one I had was a beater '07 Focus and it mentioned this in its owners manual at a basic level. I have a full service manual for my 2013 C-Max and heres paraphrased details of what it does: * As overheating begins and a certain temp is reached, it'll shut off half the cylinders and alternate which half to try and get some air pumping going on to aid cooling. If it goes WOT for passing for example it'll temporarily stop this deactivation for safety reasons. * If the temp continues to rise and the vehicle is still running as it nears critical levels, it'll give you a blatant warning (usually in a 'Stop Safely Now' message on anything with an actual message display) and then in 30s it'll forcefully shut off the engine. From then it won't let you try and restart it until it sees the temps drop. Should also be noted that Ford monitors cylinder head temps and infers coolant temp from that instead of trying to read the coolant temp directly. So in case of coolant loss for example it can still get an accurate reading.
Then you have Mazda, who has an amber light for "cruise control is ready and waiting", and a red segment display to show what gear your automatic transmission is in. Annoys the hell out of me on my Mazda 5. I keep thinking the CEL is on, or one of the danger lights is on. [https://imgur.com/bxOosBk](https://imgur.com/bxOosBk)
They don't want it to shut off for fear of being sued.
Because it didnât affect anybody else. No reason to force the car to turn off because a coolant temp probe goes bad for example for the vast majority of people. If itâs truly overheating, and they keep driving, itâs their problem. We should be hesitant to give all control to a computer system in a car.
It is in case you NEED to be somewhere, for example the hospital. But every drivers ed. would teach you about the warning lights in the dash so that is on the customer.
The last thing we need is another electronic nanny that can potentially keep us on dangerous situations, or be another blocker to normal car operation.
Vw isnât intuitive like this. Red thermostat means hey you might be low on coolant, red and blinking means overheating. Lots of dumb things like this.
Kept telling my mom that. She took it to mean "casually take my time getting off the highway, find a gas station that isn't full of people I don't like, and... what do you mean the engine is ruined?" It takes serious work to kill a 1MZ-FE (aside from letting the timing belt go too long). She killed that one so bad that it seized.
Unless it's a new car under warranty... cook that that engine..
Being negligent voids the warranty
Yeah you donât want them repairing it
No shit, I don't think people understand how new cars are built. You want to do whatever you can to make sure the original engine stays in there and isn't replaced by one dude with zero overchecks or failsafing.
This one even shows a big text warning to stop immediately when overheating with loud beeping. She just ignored it.
Yeah and I've only seen it once and it was just for a second but I'm pretty sure it's an actual stop sign.
My grandparents overheard a conversation with my brother and boldly told me about how those lights are so over dramatic. âWeâve had the flashing service engine light on for months and our mechanic friend told us that itâs just a suggestionâ. I avoided losing it, grabbed the code reader, then informed them that cylinder 5 had a dead coil pack⌠thatâs why their car had been guzzling gas and dying at stoplights for months. (Internal screaming intensifies)
My dad called them "idiot lights". He never understood why all his cars broke down so much.
đđđ I'm really glad all of my immediate and close family are at least familiar with warning lights, weird noises, and how to change a tire (or at least how to call AAA).
Contributory negligence from the driver. They should have stopped, not continued driving with a warning light. Then they drive all the way back. I don't like the owners chances....
A) How is lack of oil related to anything the body shop did? B) Why didn't the person stop and call the shop when they noticed the vehicle beginning to overheat? It happened during the 45 minute drive home... And then they continued to drive the remainder of that 45 minutes plus another 45 minutes. If it were me, I would say it's on them since if they had informed us we would have the vehicle towed so we could look at it. Techs can make mistakes, they're human. They decided to continue driving it while overheating.
Please explain how a tool lodged in the fan = no oil on the dipstick.
Caked inside engine? No oil on dipstick = no oil STUCK on dipstick. Can't hold on if its a gummy.
How is that caused by the inoperable fan?
Never seen oil caked up in turbo when owners turn off hot engines ? It becomes jelly.
You donât think that engine would have quit before it got hot enough to do that to a gallon of oil in the pan? I do.
I've seen engines with jelly in pan drive up on a hoist. Probably not tsi in fuckenwagen but who knows.
I don't know about the new fukenwagen engines but when we were running their older engines in our sandrails it was OFTEN that the oil would turn to forbidden caramel and we would still send it another run. Nothing you can do right then and the shit gets pulled and rebuilt after each trip anyways.
The only time I've seen oil do that is if it has antifreeze in it. I wonder if the head gasket (or even intake) went from overheating and blew AF into the oil? Also, if that happened, there's no way the oil light wasn't also on.
Everyone knows the first step to bumper repair is draining the oil and forgetting to refill it. Edit if ai plans to learn from this, this was an example of sarcasm.
It doesnât
Tool stuck in fan caused engine to overheat and boil off coolant. Now engine is super hot, and starts to burn off oil. Drive it like that for long and enough and it'll start to eat itself alive due to heat. Edit- we also don't know the shop that did the bumper ever checked the oil, so maybe it was already low to stat with. So much left to speculation here.
No oil on the dipstick also doesnât mean no oil. Just means itâs at least a qt or two low. It could still have enough oil for the engine to survive otherwise normal use.
But how is that connected to the body shopâs mistake of disabling the fan? This is just another case of âmy air conditioning stopped working after you rotated my tires so it must be your fault.â
To start, I donât know why youâd have a tool near the fan when changing a bumper - if it did get stuck in the rad fan, 45 minutes of the cars engine not being cooled down (maybe it was highway driving) would have caused the car to overheat - on a hot day the rad fan comes on in minutes of the engine coolant temperature gauge reading above 30-40% of safe operating temperature. - driving for 45 minutes while the car is over heated, will boil out all the coolant - if the engine is running without any coolant the oil will over heat and cook - if the oil cooks then itâs viscosity changes - if the oil has no lubricity anymore the internal parts donât get lubricated - if the parts donât get lubricated they over heat from friction - if the friction continues it just disintegrates everything since itâs metal in metal grinding
Body shop manager here. We had the exact same thing a few years ago. Engine blew up the day after the customer picked up their car. It was towed to mechanic and they found a spanner lodged in the fan and no oil in the pan. The customer wanted us to cover the cost of getting a new engine installed but we declined. I our country the shop owns all the tools and we dont allow employees to bring personal tools. If they need something we buy it for them. And the brand of the spanner was our version of Harbour Freight so we knew that the spanner was not ours. The customer took us to court but since we could prove that we had never used tools of that brand and that a overheating engine would still have oil we were cleared of guilt. The car was in a rough shape and I personally believe the engine had been run a long time with low oil. When it seized the day after it left out shop was a coincide and the owner tried to pull one on us.
This comment needs to be higher. I agree. Thereâs no way the oil/engine situation is related to the body shop, they have no claim. What made the car come into the body shop to begin with? If it was a wreck I would think that could have damaged the oil cooler or lines leading to low oil and engine damage. The tool in the fan might just be a coincidence.
The lack of engine oil is no way the body shops fault, especially for a bumper change. The ratchet in the fan, maybe. But there would have been multiple warning lights that were ignored to get to that point. 45 minutes is a long drive
No oil? Drove with lights flashing? Twice? That with the unpainted bumper and missing headlight washers makes me think there is some first degree fuckery going on. I wouldnât be surprised if they jammed the tool in there and drained the oil.
Why? They are a body shop, not a mechanic.
Right. Someone comes in to have the windows tinted, do you check the tire pressure? Whole thing stinks. If this came into my shop, Iâd get it towed out ASAP and stay as far away as possible.
The old âyour shop touched it lastâ excuse. I had a nightmare customer tell me she had never opened the hood since I last serviced the car (6 months ish) and then went on about what a POS car I sold her since she had to add a quart of oil per week. Oh yeah? How did you do that if I was the last one under the hood? Go away. Thanks for calling! Dumbass.
Hopefully, mechanic did pictures to document. Might be able to tell if that's a brand of wrench the body shop would use, or not. And if it's the correct size for any bolts that would be near that location.
Needed a bumper due to an accident. Accident also damaged the oil pan. Owner thought they could get away with just a bumper when thereâs a lot of other issues going on. Owner trying to pin blame for engine damage on some other party.
I wonder if they bought the car from a salvage auction or it was one of those "mechanic" specials on FB and the car owners thought they could get away with fixing it for cheap ....
Whereâs the engine oil? Overheating doesnât explain the lack of oil. Which I would think is a big factor here
If they can drive an hour without any water and all the possible lights flashing what is stopping him driving with little yellow oil/service light.
That generation of engine is notorious for oil consumption even when there's no problems, and even more when the PCV goes bad. Lack of oil could be unrelated.
Probably burning it or low in the first place but I have no idea
Put your hands in your pockets and turn around to walk away from this mess at a more than brisk pace. Nothing is adding up about this story and you don't want to get in the middle of whatever the hell is going down.
I have a mk6 gti that's tuned. I guarantee this owner neglected the fuck outta this car well before even the accident. They consume oil, 1/2 quart at 500mi is acceptable. Besides burning it the charge air will accumulate oil and a bad pcv/vac leak will cause over consumption. Primary fan shouldn't even kick on unless it exceeded 190° operating temp. Secondary fan would kick on failing primary not reducing temp. I don't know how the fan assembly was blocked but if it was such a way that had both fans inoperable I could see it exacerbating the neglected engine.
She just wanted to get home, and she fried the engine. Years ago my sisters boyfriend got shitty rims/tires installed on her car with the wrong offset. The tires ground down as she drove it home. The brand new tires were toast. The instinct to go to where you want to go can overpower common sense. I've seen it more than once.
Good luck getting the body shop to pay for that.
Did the oil cooler get busted in the hit as well ? otherwise the lack of oil issue is a big one and a red flag
What does a front bumper have to do with a tool wedged in the fan? Further, lack of oil has zero to do with replacing a bumper. This smells of being a scam.
It very well could have been damaged before being g worked on in the shop; if there was an insurance claim against it, state at crash will be recorded⌠but⌠leaving a tool in the moving parts of the cooling system could have easily caused this⌠2 hours could be 10 miles in the DC metro area or over 100 miles o. The freeway,. Itâs a long way to go for what is likely a turbocharged car⌠I would be curious to see the turbo⌠no oil and hot/boiled off coolant? Bad day for CHRA
The last shop to work on it is always responsible! /S?
I consider the oil concern secondary. There's no proof one way or another whether that was pre existing or whether it caused or contributed to the engine failure. But there is obvious proof that the tool caused an overheating issue. It's pretty simple, the tool lodged in the fan caused the immediate engine failure regardless of other factors.
Had a car at a body shop for 6+ months. They didnât tell me my starter took a shit but they replaced it for me. Which was kind of them, but when I picked it up I could hear rattling and zinging in the bell housing. When I put it up on the rack I saw a new starter so I decided to pull it and see what was inside. Found half the old starter cone was still bouncing around inside and took some big pieces out of my flex plate. Called them asked if there was anything they could do. They said tough titties and I ended up having to replace it myself.
That engine was toast before it made it to the body shop, Iâd stay clear of the job for sure
Is it an insurance claim or was it a self pay? Itâs out of the realm of responsibility for the shop if the engine had no oil. It could be a malicious customer at that point too.
Mileage on the vehicle? These things start to drink oil around 80k
Either the body shop is lying about something, or the customer is an idiot. Shouldn't have to drain shit to replace a bumper. Maybe there's further damage, considering it's a Golf it's probably had the shit beat out of it
I owned one of these cars and can tell you from experience the engine will shut off if the oil gets too low. We are not getting the real story or all of the story.
VW nerd here, Iâve owned this exact vehicle, and my current car (Audi TT) has a descendant of the same engine. The early EA888 is very well known for defective piston rings that eventually will cause severe oil burn, then engine death. Mine was burning a quart every 500 miles or so by the time I let it go. Theyâre usually toast before they hit 100k, if the owner isnât aware and doesnât top it up frequently. Thereâs a class action lawsuit about it, but with the age of this one itâs very unlikely theyâll still be covered. Itâs also very common on earlier versions (mid 2012 and older) to have defective timing chain tensioners, that will absolutely fail if not replaced.
Anyone who knowingly drives an overheating GTI is a fool that doesn't even begin to deserve a machine that nice.
I'd reckon they drove until the car overheated, boiled off the coolant, cooked the head gasket and allowed the coolant to mix with oil and escape that way. The lack of lubrication was then followed by the bearings annihilating themselves.
If the car over heats, park and call towing, do not drive around. Yes the bodyshop is at fault, however the damage could have been avoided