Stock engine blown, warranty denied, anyone taken this to court?
 

So I've joined the spun bearing club. Stock 2015 car (no autoX/track) 20,000miles, was burning oil.

Toyota inspected and claimed no evidence of oil burning; straight up refused any warranty claims and tried to throw me a bill for a new engine.

I hire a guy who specializes in engine analysis, he finds incorrectly torqued heads from factory (causing them to warp and leak), severe oil useage and over application of gasket material.

I'm still fighting Toyota on this, but it's pretty clear these engines were not put together from the factory. I have to take this to civil court to recover costs, but Toyota was quite prepared to leave me high and dry. Has anyone considered a class action?

there is a thread under the issues/ warranty section of forum where people have added their name to list similar to your above description. it seems class action is far fetched, and some report warranted motors and others get hung on the hook over a new motor.

sorry to hear of your troubles.

Class action for a one off engine burning oil? Never heard of a mis-torqued head on here before this. The vast majority of spun bearings were early 13s and not sure I have even read about another 15 with the issue.
Not sure how burning oil caused a spun bearing anyway. If burning enough to drop the level to where bearings are at risk there should have been a massive cloud following you everywhere and it should have been looked at before it ever spun a bearing. Burning oil in that quantity would leave all sorts of tell tail signs that would be easy to spot. A head warped that badly should have had cooling issues as well.
Where would the engines have been put together if not at the factory?
Did you buy the car new? Something doesn't add up here.

First Post too !!

22R

think he was saying subaru didn't build the engines well



should be a good one :popcorn:

I am not challenging the OP it just doesn't seem to work with what he has said. There is a puzzle piece missing in my head.

I agree.

OP, what is the "rest of the story" ....... ??

Like, how did this expert determine that the heads weren't torqued properly from the factory, on an engine with 20,000 miles .......??


humfrz

Fair call, skepticism is good. :D

I could be some jerk that did a bad downshift on a track, removed the turbo and is now crying foul. In truth I'm a guy that uses this as his daily driver and uses it to drop his kids to school... but the internet ain't the place to prove it. The issue is I bought the car used (10,000miles) off the lot of a non-Toyota dealer; that was their angle for warranty denial.

There were no cooling issues, leaks or clouds of smoke, no check engine lights either: I just went from driving on the highway to dead in under 5 mins. There was a quart left in the engine. While the Toyota dealer did a teardown, they claimed no evidence of leaks or oil burning (they said plugs were not fouled), and declared cause of failure to be "lack of lubrication". They couldn't tell me where the oil went; and they would put nothing in writing. I was blamed for not checking my oil.

I assume most people either eat the cost or get warranty coverage; commissioning a 3rd party to inspect and teardown an engine ain't a cheap option.

My guy documented piston crowns, plugs and exhaust manifold covered in soot indicating long term burning. There was fresh oil in the intake. Head tolerances were well out of spec. If it's just a random one-off engine then that's good new for everyone else, but I have a report that points to possible incorrect tooling from the factory (i.e concerning amount torque variation across the heads specs, heads warped well out of spec.) which suggests it mightn't be just me.

When I file the engine report becomes public and I'll post it up here for everyone to look at. It might help someone else who gets screwed over by Toyota/Subaru. It just sucks because I love this freakin car :(

Check my join date; I'm a pro lurker ;)

Unless you have maintenance records or an inspection report from before you bought it I suspect it will be an uphill fight.

You might be able to go after the other dealer for some of the cost.

Good luck.

That was my concern for your situation. Not that screw ups don't happen when assembling parts but the likelihood of Subaru missing the torque specs on head bolts bad enough for it to warp is extremely remote. It is a critical fail point and would have at least 3 checks done on it before passing on to the next stage in the line.

The much more likely scenario is that the previous owner had the head off for some unknown reason and did not reinstall it properly. Who knows it could even be the reason that he traded it in the first place.


Now obviously I have not been able to see what your guy did but things still don't make sense to me. Oil in the intake is not coming from a bad head gasket seal, if there is that much soot on everything then the car should have been smoking like an old coal plant, the head gasket controls the coolant as well as the oil so one shouldn't leak that badly and the other be fine and I still don't get how the oil burning took out a bearing.


You may have quite an argument on your hands but I do wish you well on this and hope you do keep us updated.

If you have no proof that the oil level was adequate before the blown engine I think you're shit out of luck.

It's in the users manual to check the oil at every other fuel fill up or once a month or something, if you haven't honestly been keeping an eye on it then it's on you. Even a proof of fillup within the last interval might be enough (should have been at ~15k miles), but if you don't have anything I think we found the root cause and it wasn't a manufacturer defect.

Edit: heads being out of spec after an engine goes pop sounds like a normal occurance to me, but what the hell do I know. A violent enough event could make the most pristine assembly look like it was a slop job.

imo unless you're sure the engine was maintained properly you'll lose, find a used engine for <$4k have it put in by the most reputable people you can pay and enjoy the car for many years to come, either you got screwed by the previous owner or you legit neglected the oil. Engine failures truly are rare on this car, sure more common than a Civic or Camry, but less common than many exotics.

When I read this story it sounds very similar to stories you read about the quick oil change places. The common theme on those stories is lack of oil and blown engine, either from forgetting to tighten drain plug or just outright not putting oil back in car because the oil gun is not functioning and the tech thinks the oil went in when actually none did and they didn't check it before finalizing the job.

Just a complete side thought, but when was the last oil change prior to the engine going?

I shortened your post to reflect the issue at hand here.

Basically your engine ran out of oil and now you have to prove (in court) that you did not cause this oil to go to that level.

If you were indeed burning oil, why is there only one quart left? With the dipstick below the minimum level there should at least be 3 quarts in the crankcase, so something doesn't add up, either with your story or with the dealer/Toyota's.

Even if it was burning oil, you needed to document the issue(s) and not let it get to the point where one quart was left. My car could be smoking out the tailpipe for all they care, but if you let a known problem linger and allow the oil to get down to one (1!) quart then there are bigger issues at play here beyond a blown engine.

-alex

This happens, and happened to me. About a week after going to jiffy lube my mazda 3's engine seized while doing 80 mph.