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Re: 5-speed transmission seizure, #2 Posted by Justin VanAbrahams [Email]  (#32) [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Justin VanAbrahams) on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:28:19
In Reply to: Re: 5-speed transmission seizure, #2, tz, Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:04:30 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
I sincerely hope you are joking with this remark:
"Why did they not refuse to release the car for sure death?"
No shop on earth would tell a customer they can't have their car back if they refuse to maintain it. That is simply a crazy thing to even think, besides being completely illegal.
My experience matches Swedecar - I've taken numerous calls from people with car problems, and the conversations usually end with, "Oh, yeah, you know, I remember my mechanic telling me something about something last year - do you think this is related?" Nobody listens. They want their car back to go about their business.
I don't know where you are going with this line of thinking, unless you are simply putting forward the notion that maybe they screwed you out of an oil change. If you are suggesting they drained the transmission and double-filled the engine, you'd drain ten quarts out of the engine, not five. Five is what the engine should have.
Even given an experienced garage could mistake a hex-drive drain plug with an Allen- or square-drive drain plug, it seems incredibly unlikely they could somehow then forget to add oil (leaving you with the five you came in with) or add 1/2 quart of oil to the sump and say, "Welp, guess this car only needs a 1/2 quart of oil on a change!" None of this situation points to any sort of mistake.
There is no way you can tell "dirty oil" from looking at it. Oil turns dark with contamination but just as readily with heat. Older motors cause this to happen more quickly as blowby increases with age and their oil becomes contaminated more quickly. A few hundred miles on an old motor and fresh conventional oil will get dark. You should see what my 350,000 mile old diesel Suburban does to oil after 20 miles. The suggestion to get it analyzed is a good one if you're trying to prove they didn't change the engine oil - an analysis will tell you quite conclusively how old that oil is and what it's been through.
FWIW, speaking from experience, a 5-speed transmission can go quite some time with little to no oil in it - especially if it only does short trips. A friend of mine sent a beautiful '85 900T to the scrapyard by not adding oil. One night while driving with him I commented the transmission was loud and I forced him to pull over & check. There wasn't a drop on the dip stick. We went back to the house & grabbed my car, and he had the strict instructions to drive nowhere until he added oil. Around four months later the transmission seized just as he pulled into his parking spot at home. Car never moved again.
Keep in mind that transmissions leak from unusual places, and frequently only when hot (like, on the road). My friend's car never leaked a drop of anything, yet somehow in the course of 18 months the transmission went from full of Redline MTL to none. It got hot, leaked out, but never left a spot on the ground when stationary. Truly wish it had, because he probably would have addressed it then.
I don't know you, your son, or the mechanic, but from what you relayed in your first post, I think the only mistake made was either your son not checking the oil or not telling this indie to please go ahead and fill it before he took it.
Just my $0.02.
posted by 69.62.186...
, Sat, 18 Jun 2011 14:41:32
, Sat, 18 Jun 2011 14:41:11, Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:50:50, Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:28:19 <-- Viewing This Message, Sat, 18 Jun 2011 22:40:54
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