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

[mav1178]

Originally Posted by Jonk

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?

[Capt Spaulding]

^^^^^ 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

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Jonk

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.

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.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by gtengr

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.

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.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

The oil change interval for a 2015 is every 6,000 miles.

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

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by strat61caster

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.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

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.

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

[paulca]

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.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by strat61caster

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

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.

[jvincent]

@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.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by jvincent

@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.

[Shinigami301]

Again, how often do you check your oil?

I check mine at each and every fueling.

[fx1mark]

My boss was a loyal Subaru owner and had an older Subaru outback. she always had it serviced at the Subaru dealer and never checked her oil level (I would say most people don't check their oil levels, especially if it is regularly serviced). at 110,000 miles the engine failed, the car was towed to the dealer and the service manager told her that the car had 110,000 miles and that was just basically the life of the engine. she was of course furious and after fighting with Subaru corporate for weeks they finally agreed to pay for half of the engine repair. She learned by researching online that that particular engine had issues with burning oil. Once the car was repaired and she picked it up she asked if the car was reliable to make a long road trip and they said yes. the car ended up breaking down on the way. It turned out the transmission failed. She tried to get them to repair it for free and of course they wouldn't. she got rid of the car and now drives a vw golf gti.

[ZZT86]

^^ Unfortunately for your boss she has purchased an even more problematic car than the Outback :/ I have heard that the Subaru Boxer is renowned for oil consumption, how much depends on how it was "run-in" when new. My BR86 uses a little - perhaps 150-200ml/5K kms so it's not much of a worry but because "I know" I check it often just to be sure, pretty much every week in the same spot @ the same time.

On the other hand my previous gen7 Celica GTS NEVER drank a drop until it got to about 300K kms but even then it would have been less than my new BR86 ! My old MCV20R Camry with the 1MZ-FE is only 90K kms old & I'm 100% confident it uses NIL oil but I still check it - just to be sure.

For me Subaru make average motor cars & it shows up in the JD Power surveys that are often done, Toyota / Lexus are about as good as it gets for bombproof reliability, efficiency & longevity.