Oil Change Horror Stories - Lehto's Law Ep. 41

hello and welcome once again to Latos law I'm Steve Leto attorney at law state of Michigan driving practicing law now for almost 24 years specializing in consumer protection and lemon law people often call my office and they've got a problem with a car and I've also written quite a bit for Jalopnik sub blog car buying and also opposite lock plus I wrote a book called the lemon law Bible so people call my office because they've got a problem with a car it could be anything from a car purchase gone wrong an auto repair gone wrong and quite often an oil change gone wrong so today we're gonna talk about oil change horror stories I've represented probably a dozen or two of people in my career who brought their vehicle into an oil change place and had the oil change place do something wrong which often results in a destroyed engine so there's things you can do what to watch out for and how to handle it if it happens to you and one of my favorite cases and I favorite I mean just simply it's it's a great example I can talk about it wasn't a good thing that happened to my client but a very good friend of mine in fact years ago I've mentioned this before I worked in radio for many many years and I was even a disc jockey and so when I went to law school I stayed friends with many many disc jockey friends and after I got out of law school and started practicing law one of my good friends a disc jockey called me up and he said Steve my brand-new car I took it in for its first oil change and in fact this was a jeep wrangler and the jeep wrangler in the owners manual said you had to bring it in one time for an early oil change in fact I owned Jeep Wrangler a few years later and I remember doing this you bring the vehicle in for a very early oil change as the engine breaks in the theory is there might be extra stuff in the oil that needs to come out he brought it in for the very first oil change and when they took it back there they did the work on it they give him back the vehicle he gets in it he drives down the road he makes it about a block and the dashboard lights up like a Christmas tree and he immediately shuts the engine off and he walks back to the oil change place and say guys um something's wrong with my vehicle and a mechanic looks and misses oh my god I forgot to put oil back in your car I mean he just it popped into his head suddenly oh I forgot to put the oil back in now one thing about this particular case is this was not a quickie oil change place this was a service center in Flint Michigan that specializes actually in tires they sell a lot of tires but also advertised they do basic stuff to cars tune ups brake jobs and oil changes and it was right down the street in the radio station I used to work at and so my friend took it there because it was nearby and of course they forgot to put the oil back in the engine and so they I don't know they pushed the vehicle back or they towed it back to the repair shop and the owner comes up says you know something dude yeah we ruined your engine but we'll fix it for you he said what do you mean you'll fix it it's a brand new Jeep I've only had it for 500 miles what are you doing the guy said we're gonna let our mechanics tear the engine apart see if there's anything wrong with it and then we'll put it back together again you'll have you'll you'll have your Jeep and my friend said Steve is this how it works and I said no that's not how it works if your engine's fried which we suspect it is you're entitled to have that vehicle you know fixed by the local jeep dealer so my friend had the vehicle towed to a Jeep deal already got an estimate on a short block because they said hey look this this engines been launched which is an old school term lunched and so we filed a lawsuit and in Michigan and in many states Michigan's got a lock on the motor vehicle service repair act and the motor vehicle service repair act says if you've got to sue a repair facility for a botched repair not only can you get their actual damages paid to you on your behalf but you can also get them to pay your attorney fees and court costs on your behalf so you don't have to worry about how much it's gonna cost to hire an attorney to chase after a place that does something like this so we filed the lawsuit and interestingly enough the minute we filed the lawsuit I got contact by an insurance carrier who just said yeah we'll take care of it we'll buy your guy a new engine whatever it's gonna take and sure enough that's they did they paid my attorney fees also and I asked the guy I'm curious why didn't you guys just take care of this a second my client showed back up and said hey you guys just you know ruined my engine and the insurance carrier guy says well you know something it might be because this insurance policy only covers litigation it doesn't cover other claims so that could be it I don't know the guy could've been pulling my leg I don't know but all I know is they took care of my friend's engine and his Jeep and they paid his attorney fees and court costs also and it was a big hassle and you know I tell people all the I see look you know no one's gonna get rich off these cases you're lucky you get back to zero so you're you know you're better off if this doesn't happen to you you wish it doesn't happen do you hope it doesn't happen to you but if it does happen to you those things you can do so I always tell people you should watch out for this and bye watch out for this I mean if you've got to take your vehicle someplace you have the oil change by somebody else watch them while they do the work most oil change places will actually pull the dipstick out afterwards and check the oil make sure they do that I hate to say this but I take my my vehicles into a couple different places around here and I stand I'm the kinds of guy I'm the guy who stands the window and just watches them as they do the work and I and I'm you know looking make sure the guy underneath there does his stuff and looking to watch make sure they put oil into it making sure they they check the dipstick and there's an oil change place I go to where I sit in the car while they do the work and I you know sit there and look underneath the hood and I watch the guys do the work and I'm making sure they do this stuff I've also had clients other crazy things happen to them I in fact this is one of the oddest circumstances of my entire legal career I had two different people contact my office in the same week with oil change horror stories that happened within days of each other at different oil change places but I mean I literally thought that the second phone call was the same woman calling me a second time with the same story you know I got my my car oil change done I'm driving down the road and the engine blows up you know that's Story number one story number two almost identical and I'm like did they just talk to you she's like no what are you talking about it's okay sorry I'm confusing you somebody else interestingly enough in one of those two stories the clients driving down the road shortly have to leave the oil change place and the check engine lights come on the engine stalls so she you know coasts the car over the side of the road and she doesn't know anything about cars so she calls a local gas station and they send the tow truck out and a guy pops the hood he's looking under there and he actually spots the oil filter on a crossmember underneath the engine the oil filter fell off and landed on a crossmember so it was sitting right there and the guy goes oh there's there's your problem and he holds up the oil filter so she saves the oil filter and you know we called the oil change place and they tell us to take a flying leap I kid you not and so at that point we filed a lawsuit same thing happened once the lawsuit litigation ensues and they agreed to settle the case don't know why they forced us to sue him but they did now the other case is a little trickier because the clients driving down the road the engine seizes and the check engine lights all come on and she pulls over the side of the road and she doesn't only about cars either she calls a tow truck guy comes up pops the hood and goes well you know your dipsticks smoking you know this that's no oil in your engine she was lights got an oil change and the guy goes oh that's your problem he looks underneath the engine he goes yeah your oil filters missing okay so we file a lawsuit on that one also and the oil change place actually defended that lawsuit and said well you didn't save the oil filter I kid you not and my client and I are like well how do you save the oil filter that falls off the car while you're driving down the road and the attorney for the oil change place actually said she should have gone back and walked up the road to look for it because that's evidence and without that evidence you know you can't expect us to take care of this despite the fact that she just said the oil change done and there's oil all underneath the car so those are things that can happen the oil filter can fall off they can forget to put the oil back in they can also double gasket the filter this is a tricky one and anybody out there's done an oil change knows this that when you take the old oil filter off hopefully you can do it by hand but if you don't do it by hand you can use it will filter a wrench and you take it off and the oil filter comes off and there's a round rubber gasket that when you put the new one on that gasket seats the oil filter up against the metal but you don't have metal on metal you've got a piece of rubber in there and the problem is that if an oil filters not taken up properly or if it's cranked on too tight and then taken off wrong if you're not paying attention the old gasket can sometimes stick to the engine and when you pull the old filter off the gas gets not on it so you take the brand-new oil filter and you put it on there and now you've got two gaskets where there ought to only be one and if you double the gasket a filter what can actually leak out of that and it depends on how how well those two gaskets seat and so on but you could actually you make it a good distance before anything bad happens it's also possible that a person can put an oil filter on wrong by cross reading it and the oil filters got threads on the inside and it screws onto the engine and so if you actually don't get it seated just right when you start threading it and you crank it especially if you're in a hurry at a quick uol change place you cross thread it so what happens is it does kind of go on the engine and it kind of sticks there and when they fire the car up that might not leak a whole lot or it might not leak at all at first and then of course you driving down the road the filter can just fall off that's one of the most interesting things about this topic I wrote an article about this about a year ago that was run on a car buying I think about you know oil chain horror stories which you got to watch out for and I had people you know commenting and many people saying yeah this happened to me it happened to a friend of mine I had mechanics chiming in saying yeah you know we had a guy at our place he wasn't that good need screw up like this all the time I heard people who said yeah I worked in a little change place and we had things happen just sheer volume you know what are you gonna do but this is one where you know it can happen and it depends on how weirdly it's done but you know there's guys out there and they're people out there who work in the industry who take a lot of care with the work they do and there's also people out there who don't and I've also heard that some of the oil change places the guys down in the pit might not be certified master mechanics if you know what I mean so sometimes they might not be the best trained the most skilled and they might not care all that much you know so what you know you can be very very careful make sure they do this stuff right you might ask well how do you know if the guy cross-threaded your filter when you put the oil filter on well how you know is you number one make sure that they look underneath the car when they're done doing the oil filter change but number two when you drive at home or wherever you go after the oil change literally wherever you go the first time you stop the car and get out of it shut the engine off get out look underneath it look for drips okay it's gonna drip it's got a problem and that of course is the primary problem with a bad oil change is that the oil that's inside the engine gets out of the engine you don't want the oil to escape okay so anytime you look underneath your car and there's dripping under there so long as it's not air-conditioning condenser condensation anything dripping is bad underneath the car whether it's trans fluid or brake fluid or engine oil okay so when you get the oil changed in your car the very first time you stop and park at some place look underneath it you come out in the morning look underneath it again you know I'm one of these people who I fun at achill I'm always looking underneath my car I've spotted some things I've actually fixed some problems very very early a couple years ago I walked by my car one morning and I saw one single drip of something underneath the front end of my car and I wiped it with my finger and I looked it I realize it wasn't engine oil it's too far it was too far north and it was trans fluid and I looked and sure enough there was a worm gear clamp a hose clamp and a piece of hose going to my transmission cooler and the worm gear clamp had worked itself loose and the end of the rubber hose was rotted a little tiny bit so I went to the store about a new piece of hose I spliced it in I yank the old one out put the new one in spliced it together check my trans fluid had to put a tiny little bit in but I solved that problem before it became worse and it was because I spotted that little drip underneath my car so after you get an oil change done in your car look for things dripping underneath your car it's another good reason that if you have a driveway or a clean garage that you know you can look underneath your car and look for drips I know people who like they keep their garages you know sparkling clean and they hate to have drips on the floor so do i but I when I see them I'm glad I spotted them because that's a diagnostic tool looking for things that are dripping underneath your car so again the engine could be double the oil filter can be double gasket it can be cross threaded I've also heard of drain plugs falling out and this is a scary concept but underneath your car there's an oil pan and the oil pan has got a drain plug that screws into it and you know you when you unscrew that all the oil comes out of the oil pan so it's a it's a tricky maneuver because if you're underneath the car and you're upside down on your back and there's not a lot of room in there sometimes you unscrew that and you wind up dropping that you know the plug into the oil catch thing or it hits the ground you get oil all over the place or if you hold on to it it might be hot you know and so what happens is you know guys will take that and they won't necessarily clean it very well or they'll you know put it on as an afterthought not paying attention to it it'll cross thread that also I've also heard of people who crank that on so tight that they stripped it it's crazy but you know I know that people find it so hard to believe it these guys are crazy things can happen on in an auto repair all you've got to do is try to remove the lug nuts on a car when some guys used an impact wrench to put them on and he didn't care about how hard he put them on okay everybody's encountered this before where you are you get a brand new set of tires put in your car you've got to change one a little while later you to flat or something and next thing you know you're out there the breaker barn you can't undo them because it cranked down so tight so you know people aren't always the best when it comes to how tight they make these things so the oil filter drain excuse me the oil drain plug shouldn't be cranked on so tight that it takes like you know major power tools to remove it but once in a while crazy stuff like that happens so these things happen it's possible that it could happen to you so you take your vehicle to get an oil change done number one save the receipt number two watch them while they do the work make sure they do everything it appears to make sense to you and then make sure they check the dipstick and show you the oil okay when you get home assuming you make at home okay look underneath of the car look for drips nothing dripping great you're all set day or two later check your oil make sure your oils topped off if it is you're good to go you're probably fine if anything happens at all okay and you think your plug fell out your oil filter fell off number one do what you can to minimize the amount of damage done to your vehicle shut your engine off immediately get the car you know off the road and then you will have to notify the shop immediately to let them know what happened and document what happened so nowadays the smart phones to take pictures okay oil filter falls off take a picture something bad happens is a big trail of oil behind your car take a picture document it all then contact the shop see guys here's what happened I expect to take care of it for me if they take care of you which they very well might do okay you're all set if they refuse to take care of it for you then you contact an attorney because there are laws out there like the motor vehicle service and repair act that says that if they damage your vehicle while they're attempting to do a repair for you and they charge you money you have the right to sue them for damages plus your attorney fees and court costs and since the attorney fees and court costs are paid for by the other side you don't need to worry about it most attorneys will talk to you about these cases for free and they'll even take these cases from you for free meaning we'll do them on a contingency where we simply get paid if we win if we don't win we don't get paid that's how it works so those are the oil change horror stories like I said in 23 years of practice I've handled dozens of them maybe and it could happen to you I've been getting fewer of them lately though fewer of them and I think that's because they're taking care of more people before the lawsuits get filed which is good you know I've got no problem with a shop or a business that actually has something happen go wrong and then there's harm done to somebody I've got no problem with that so long as they step up and take care of it okay so the shop makes a mistake and stuff and take care of it that's the way things ought to be they take care of it wonderful got no problem at all so those things change horror stories that's gonna wrap it up for this week's Latos law as always questions or comments feel free to contact me at Latos live.com le h TOS la w.com i'm also on twitter at Steve let ste ve le HT oh and you can subscribe and rate this show on stitcher iTunes and YouTube thanks for listening thanks for watching bye bye

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 67,283

Rating: 4.9547324 out of 5

Keywords: Law (Industry), law, Michigan (US State), Automobile (TV Genre), Motor Oil (Product Category), Attorney, Lawyer, www.lehtoslaw.com

Id: LDis9cLBiD4

Length: 17min 24sec (1044 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2015