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.

I was so focused on the head gasket thing I totally missed the one quart of oil statement.
There is not a hope that the car burned through all of that oil without it looking like it was doing mosquito control when going down the road. Hell, to burn through that much oil in 10K it would have to be practically pissing out the exhaust. The cats would have been clogged before even half that much was burned.

maybe over 20k though? If it never had an oil change? That's certainly possible... as we entertain ourselves waiting for OP to return...

Subaru states ~1quart/1k miles is acceptable and normal so it's within the realm of possibility that it did actually burn up all it's oil (given it's ~5.5 quart capacity even if it was properly changed at 15k miles). That doesn't excuse neglecting to check the oil however.

I would buy that if he drove it hard but as he stated it is a lightly used DD. I push my oil changes out to the very limit and have never lost even a 1/4 of a quart much less 4.5.
I was of course referring to burning it all up if it had been changed at the proper intervals so we assumed it was full.

I think proof of oil changes is all you'll need to win this case. The dealer pointing to it being a used car for the warranty denial is BS. That is immaterial unless they can point to hard evidence of a mod causing the damage, or you don't have evidence that the oil was changed at the minimum required intervals. Save the receipts from your 3rd party inspection and seek reimbursement.

Proof of oil changes is all well and good if there was still oil in the engine. This goes way beyond proving that the oil was changed.

The problem is this: there is a quart of oil left in the engine.

If I went to a tire shop for new tires, ran the tires for 50,000 miles, had low tire pressure for 10k and ran it without checking the pressures periodically, and the tire sidewall blew out... do I just take my receipt of the tire change at the shop and seek reimbursement/legal relief just because I changed it at an authorized shop?

Maybe the tire shop screwed up installing the valve stem... that caused the low pressure. But it doesn't take away from the fact that to get to 1 quart in the engine, you need to 1) burn the oil away, or 2) have it physically leak (out) somewhere. Obviously we can rule out faulty oil changes since that's highly unlikely, but my point is that there's a dipstick in the engine bay for a reason, and to get to 1 quart tells me that dipstick was not used in the proper manner.

Now try that in a court of law, and it will shoot holes in the claim that is very hard to go around.

Eh...

Definitely waiting for OP to come back though.
:popcorn:

According to OP, Toyota's inspection concluded there wasn't any evidence of leaks or burning oil. My assumption was the spun bearing resulted in a hole in the block or pan and the oil escaped during failure. Why would Toyota tear down a motor that had a contained rod bearing failure, and not simply point to 1 quart being recovered as evidence of neglect? That's literally all they had to say. Instead they said that there wasn't any evidence of leaks or burning, but lack of lubrication caused the failure. If that's true, then Toyota put themselves into a bad spot for defending their warranty denial (assuming OP has oil change evidence). OP needs to clarify a few details.

While possible the dealer would have to be pretty stupid to try this and there would be a big mess of oil still in the engine bay to support this claim. I thought the same thing, had it half written up and realized that would have been obvious and likely mentioned in one of the OP's two posts.

Not every blown engine ends with oil on the ground.

If OP's account is true then they have already proven to be pretty stupid by claiming anything other than low oil caused the failure. I'm aware a blown engine can not leak oil, hence my earlier reference to a "contained" rod bearing failure.

I see nothing in this statement where the dealer tried to blame anything but low oil. This is the OP's words not theirs.

Where does the dealer actually blame anything in that post? The dealer said no evidence of oil burning, warranty denied. Based on OP's account, we don't know who said there was a quart in the engine or the context surrounding that quart.

I think the idea has been covered like a corpse, but if the car was low on oil when the bearing spun, OP's chances of winning a court case over it have slimmer chances than snowballs in Tijuana.

If you're interested in keeping the car long term, I'd recommend getting a built long block from a good engine builder. Personally, I don't really need the headaches of FI so I'd go for a 13.5:1 CR and take comfort in the idea that I have a bullet proof motor.

Lemme clarify what I can: Car was previously serviced at another Toyota dealership (within service interval).

There were no leaks on ground when the car died. Never a drop in my garage floor.

After I had towed the car to the dealer they called me they said it took 4 quarts to bring it back up to full.

These were dealer's verbatim words: no signs of leaks, (drain plug, filter etc) no fouling on plugs.

Tcoat, you say it would be smoking like it was running on coal to be using that much oil, but others say that's perfectly acceptable oil usage (1qt/1000miles).

My FA20'd WRX ran for 2 years without burning a drop of oil. Something ain't right.

How often do you check your oil?

^^^^^ This.

The owners manual for my car is vague on the interval for checking the oil. Under severe/enthusiastic usage it suggests every second refueling which is about 600 miles.

The problems are 1) monitoring the oil level is generally considered part of the responsibility of ownership. If the engine ran dry, it would probably be viewed a prima facie instance of neglect. 2) If the engine is using oil and the owner knows it's using oil, then s/he should be all the more vigilant about checking it. Not doing so takes us back to problem 1.

Given the low oil level, it's just a steep uphill climb to pin the failure on a mechanical defect, because the operator is given the responsibility of maintaining the vehicle and running it low on oil takes us to problem 1. I think you're facing a catch 22. I've tried to think of an extenuating circumstance that would help. So far. I'm empty. Sorry

That is under heavy use which you said that you did not do.
The oil change interval for a 2015 is every 6,000 miles. If yours was done to schedule you would have had a change at 18,000 miles. Since you said you are at 20,000 miles and there was one quart then you went through 2.25 quarts per 1,000 miles. It would be sending smoke signals seen for miles.

Even if it managed to burn through that much in 2,000 miles it does not erase the fact that you should have been checking. If checked you should have seen it was a quart low after only 500 miles after the change and down 2.25 only 1,000 miles after. I would hope that you would have questioned the drastic drop at that point not after the engine blew.

I am not trying to be a **** here but I see no case to be made. The mechanism of loss does not mean anything in this instance. The manual (and common car maintenance practice) says to check your oil on a regular basis. If you had checked it you would have seen it was low and could have dealt with it. The moment that you drive a car off the lot it is your responsibility to check the oil and no matter what the cause of the loss is it is up to you to have it addressed before catastrophic failure.

Exactly! But now we do know there was no hole in the block but there was also no oil. The dealer is not at fault here.

It's always been 7.5k miles for the Toyota.
It was Subaru that changed to 6k so they could have the same maintenance interval across their lineup.

Source:
https://www.toyota.com/t3Portal/docu...FRS_WMG_lr.pdf

https://www.toyota.com/owners/resour...tVehicle=false

AHHHH. OK so it may not have smoked so much. The Canadian interval has always been 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) so the change to 6,000 made sense. I didn't realize that it was only the BRZ that had that change.
Makes the fact it couldn't have been checked even worse though since that means it could not have been looked at in 4,000 miles to get down to one quart.

FYI Toyota Canada links a booklet that states that the interval should be 16,000 km after the first 3 oil changes. That might be an error though as it looks like a generic Scion booklet that goes into a tC/xB/iA etc.

https://www.toyota.ca/toyota/en/my-t...owners-manuals

http://s3.amazonaws.com/toyota.site....U/OMS3013U.pdf

The amount of oil in the sump is fairly irrelevant. The ability for the engine to pump oil around the galleries is much more important.

If the engine cannot pick up oil to pump round the galleries then the oil pressure light will illuminate.

You would expect that many, many miles before an engine actually runs dry the "Low Oil Pressure" light would be blinking on and off and finally stay on.

EDIT: I had an oil pump failure on a motorbike on the way to work. I immediately got the low oil pressure light, plus the high water temp light and low battery light. Confused by all these warmings I carried on to work and back home without issue. When the mechanic looked into it, the wiring for all 3 lights was meant to bring all on for any of the 3 failures. There was no engine damage though.

Oh I wish!
Since I average around 4500 kilometers a month I have the oil changed every 6 weeks or so. The 16,000 km would really help reduce that. I will look into it.

@Tcoat, you're stuck with every 8k km. The manual is terribly written for this.

There is an "Oil and Filter Service" line, which shows every 16k after 24k, but then there is also the "Maintenance Service" line, which also includes and oil change, that alternates with the "Oil and Filter Service".

Long story short, every 8k bud.

Yep. I dug and came up with the exact same thing I always thought. Oh well I don't really pay for it anyway.

Again, how often do you check your oil?

I check mine at each and every fueling.