Quote:
Originally Posted by poptart
Dude, I found your source. He put 1 quart of ATF into the engine and was told people used to use that to degunk.
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Yeah, it wasn't a whole crankcase as FRS Dad pretended. One quart mixed in is definitely not the same as a whole fill.
People used to use ATF to clean out high mileage engines in the days when motor oil lacked the detergents we have today. My grandfather used to do that. One quart mixed in with the regular motor oil would do the trick, and you didn't do it every oil change. You only did it after tens of thousands of miles. You certainly didn't fill your whole crankcase with it and run the engine with no oil, not even for 20 miles.
Now think about that for a minute. One quart diluted in four or five quarts was enough to clean out the gunk that had built up with 1960s or 1970s era oil after 60K or 80K miles. That should give you an idea of how caustic this detergent is.
The problem for the OP is that the engine didn't grenade. What I would be afraid of instead is that the engine was subtly damaged so that performance will degrade over time, which would be difficult to make a claim for. Even if he took the 100K mile warranty, that wouldn't help him if the engine just wasn't running at its highest efficiency and was vaguely sluggish, or just "not quite right." It also doesn't help him if the car really should last 250K miles and it grenades after 101K.
If I were the OP I would want to unload this car and get a replacement that I could be confident in. It wouldn't be honest to sell this car to someone else without disclosing the ATF incident, and it's going to be difficult to sell it if it were disclosed. Therefore, to be fair, the dealership should assume that responsibility by buying the car back from the guy and finding him a replacement. At 8400 miles, I don't think it's unreasonable for that replacement to be new. Then, once they've taken the damaged car back, they can sell it and either be the dishonest ones or take the loss if they're not.