::knock on wood::
So, I heard back from the service station where my car's languishing without any oil. Turns out, the oil pan isn't cracked. Turns out driving over the curb didn't do anything at all to it.
Turns out the reason all of the oil vomited out of the car is that whomever did an oil change for me last time screwed up. Apparently the threads on the oil plug are stripped. As a work-around, the last people to do an oil change on the car put a self-tightening bolt in there instead of actually fixing anything. The mechanic who looked at my car today was really ticked off at the oil change people, informing me of how stupid the job they did was and how ridiculously short-sighted it was to put something in that would eventually just come loose and leak oil.
So, he's writing up an estimate to replace the stripped parts and then he'll call me back.
But, at least it doesn't look like I thrashed my car too badly. Good ol' car ... still hanging in there.
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2 comments:
I had one of those self-tightening plugs in my VW for years (because the original plug was stripped). It was totally fine. They always told me that the appropriate thing to do would be to eventually replace the oil pan, but since I didn't plan to keep the car forever, I never did. I'll be interested to hear what they eventually decide to do for your car.
Well, he's suggesting replacing the oil pan because of the risk of it coming loose again. For the time being, all that they did was tighten the plug back up again.
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