The dumbest thing I did to a car

[trivet]

When friends or family need advice on cars and/or maintenance – they often come to me. I am not a mechanic, but I know enough about basic maintenance and do a lot of my own on my cars. I’ve learned to wrench on my own cars originally by necessity, now it’s for fun.

This was not always the case.

When I first got my license at 16, I knew nothing about cars, I was just happy to drive! Anything at any time. And the way our family schedule was, that meant that I would drive my mom to work and then myself to school.
At 5:00 I would pick my mom back up from her office. I got to drive every day; it was great!

Now this also meant that the only person behind the wheel of the family car was me. A 1982 Buick Regal Limited (similar to the one pictured but in “Anthracite Metallic”). My dad’s pride and joy – the first car I remember him buying new.

I knew it needed gas to go, but that was the extent of my automotive knowledge. So, when the oil light came on, I did not know what that meant.

So I ignored it.

For weeks.

Well, one day on my way to pick my mom up from work – the engine just stopped. Done. Dead. Not moving. I was only a few blocks from my mom’s office so I walked the rest of the way and we called my dad.

Shortly afterwards my dad shows up, then the tow truck to take it to the dealer (car was probably 2 years old and still under warranty). The service department called my dad with the news: The engine stopped because there was no oil in it. Completely empty.

The conversation with my dad:

Dad: “Was the oil light on?”
Me: “Yeah, I guess so”
Dad: “How long was the light on?”
Me: “I don’t know, a few weeks maybe?”
Dad: “THE OIL LIGHT WAS ON FOR A FEW WEEKS AND YOU DIDN’T THINK TO MENTION THIS TO ANYONE?!?!?!”
Me: “I thought if it was important it would blink or something….”
Dad:

At this point I knew I was dead. I accepted it. No point in running or fighting, I just accepted it. I had broke my dad’s car. Not by having an accident, not a momentary lapse in judgement. But by utter and complete prolonged negligence. There was no defense.

I had no doubt I was a ‘dead teen walking’ at this point – I knew this was bad. I had no idea what my dad was going to do. But whatever it was, I deserved it. I knew that much.

Then something happened. For those who say there is no God, I disagree. I have proof.

Just as my father was taking a deep breath (to start yelling or beating, I still don’t know), the phone rang. This was before caller ID, and I don’t remember if we had an answering machine or not – but at our house, if the phone rang – you answered it.

It was the dealership. They topped off the oil and the Regal started right up. They could not find a thing wrong with it. Ran fine, they went through it and everything was good.

To this day I maintain that divine intervention (and that phone call) saved my life. If not for that call, I would not be here today to tell this tale. I didn’t even get in trouble. My dad mumbled something about me being a “dumb-ass kid” and to let him know in the future if there was any indicators or light on the dash and explained why.

My dad wasn’t a “car guy”, but he meticulously maintained everything he owned. Cars, mowers, tools, etc.
I inherited that and can now understand his anger and frustration because his “stupid kid” ran an engine run out of oil.

I’m now about the age my dad was then, and I have a dumb ass kid myself. Had this situation been repeated on my car, I could look back and remember a time when 'I' was the dumb ass and how my father handled it.

And then I would kill him.

[WhoIsTheLeader]

@trivet As dumb as you sound for ignoring a warning light for weeks, your dad probably should have taught you before then about understanding how to care for a car. I'm not too far removed from a time when I had a lot of knowledge in my head about cars but almost nothing about how to actually care for them. But I never ignored dummy lights.

The sheer amount of times a family member has ignored a warning light for a very long time is maddening though. Overheating from no coolant AT ALL has managed to claim two engines thus far. . .

But how on earth did the engine in your story survive? Running an engine out of oil is not conducive to longevity.

[trivet]

@whoistheleader said in The dumbest thing I did to a car:

@trivet As dumb as you sound for ignoring a warning light for weeks, your dad probably should have taught you before then about understanding how to care for a car. I'm not too far removed from a time when I had a lot of knowledge in my head about cars but almost nothing about how to actually care for them. But I never ignored dummy lights.

The sheer amount of times a family member has ignored a warning light for a very long time is maddening though. Overheating from no coolant AT ALL has managed to claim two engines thus far. . .

But how on earth did the engine in your story survive? Running an engine out of oil is not conducive to longevity.

To be fair, he probably did instruct me about basic care and maintenance. But I probably just ignored it. I was a stereotypical dumb-ass teenager.

How the engine survived? Easy - Divine intervention. It's the only explanation.

[WhoIsTheLeader]

@trivet And the fact that the phone rang at that moment.

I think the closest I came to something like that was hitting a literal stack of empty wooden pallets in the interstate at like 30 mph in my dad's truck. Somehow no damage and the steering wasn't even tweaked. This box truck swerved violently in front of me and I didn't have enough time to get over so I had to brake, making changing lanes almost impossible.

[e90m3]

@trivet When I was in high school/college my dad had a 2002 Regal. It didn't consume oil, but what it did was eat coolant. My dad, being an engineer, also maintained the cars to a high level. Every time the light would come on, I'd top up the coolant and it'd be good for a while. It never did over heat, but was done in with a failing transmission somewhere around 110k.

[ibRAD]

@trivet What engine did that have? The 3.8?

My first car was also a regal that my dad bought new: 78 turbo sport coupe. The engine was pretty much toast by the time I got it. My dad told me to take it easy so I promptly drove it everywhere at full throttle until it died for good and I replaced the engine with a 350 rocket.

[trivet]

@e90m3 said in The dumbest thing I did to a car:

Every time the light would come on, I'd top up the coolant and it'd be good for a while.

Great. You were a better son than I was.

Ouch.

[trivet]

@ibrad said in The dumbest thing I did to a car:

What engine did that have? The 3.8?

I honestly don't know. It wouldn't surprise me, as those were damn near bullet proof.

[trivet]

@whoistheleader said in The dumbest thing I did to a car:

@trivet And the fact that the phone rang at that moment.

Timing was everything.......

Like I said, must have been divine intervention.

[CoolMinivan.......Nobody]

@e90m3 said in The dumbest thing I did to a car:

@trivet When I was in high school/college my dad had a 2002 Regal. It didn't consume oil, but what it did was eat coolant. My dad, being an engineer, also maintained the cars to a high level. Every time the light would come on, I'd top up the coolant and it'd be good for a while.

Maintained cars to a high level....... couldn't bother to fix the cause of the coolant leak........ I don't think maintaining to a high level means what you think.....

[Roundbadge]

I've also run an engine super-low on oil, but it was a lawn mower engine.

When I was in grade school through high school, I mowed people's lawns as my job. I had a lot of lawns to mow and we eventually bought a new zero-turning-radius mower (at a time when there weren't many on the market) with a 46" deck just so I could keep up. I was responsible for all the maintenance on the mower, and had a spare set of blades which got traded out about every month. I'd change the oil probably twice a year as well. One day, I needed to be done by 4PM and had one lawn plus an oil change to do. I got a late start and found myself playing catch-up, so I rushed my oil change and blade swap, put some oil in the engine, checked the dipstick, saw oil and said 'good enough'.

I raced over to the house in question, cut their lawn, and raced back without ever stopping the engine. It occurred to me that the engine seemed to be racing, but I didn't think I had time to stop and look. The next day I attempted to start the mower up for the day's work, but it wouldn't start. I tried everything I could think of, with no luck. We eventually called the dealer we bought it from, and he took it to his shop, then called and said it was because there was no oil in it, and the engine had to be replaced.

My parents were livid, and took the money out of my savings account. I accepted that...it was my fault after all. Several years later when I was in college, my mom admitted to me that they felt bad for making me cover the repairs, and when she sold the mower she ended up giving me all of the proceeds, despite the fact that they'd paid half the price of the mower.

[e90m3]

@long_voyager94 We looked and couldn't find any evidence of it leaking coolant. Thought the sensor might have some some debris on it, so that was pulled cleaned and reinstalled with a new o-ring. That seemed to help. It eventually stopped needing coolant.

[LooseonExit]

@trivet
Never maintenance/care issues as my dad was a car guy, I've been wrenching since I could pick one up. Drilled into me early.

HOWEVER

I oppo'd my first car half off a bridge over a culvert with only the curbing catching the unibody frame to stop me. At 2AM, in the rain. Not cool to open your door to a black void below. Bonus round, I had walk home and wake my dad up to help drag it off the curbing as I couldn't back it off on my own. Bonus bonus was this is the car my dad and I rebuilt together. Fun conversation that was, let me tell you. Would not recommend.

[way2blu]

@trivet Dumbest thing I ever did was definitely neglecting to check my coolant level before doing a mountain run on a hot, dry summer day last year.

Did I know the car had coolant retention issues? Yes. It had some trouble at a previous autocross event because I hadn’t topped up the coolant in advance. There’s a small leak somewhere and it needs to be topped up every once in a while.

Did I learn my lesson from that situation and check my coolant level before a big road trip? Nope!

Nothing like having to drive for 20 minutes at full overheat to find a safe turnout to pull over and cool off.

[pickup_man]

@trivet Similar story. After college my sister moved to Denver, about 12 hours away from home with her beloved little Cobalt. I don't know the exact details because that car has an oil life meter and lets you know when it's due for a change, but someway, somehow, she neglected to change the oil for quite some time in addition to it having a slow leak, which eventually ran the oil low enough that the timing chain tensioner failed, chain skipped a tooth, bent a valve, scattered plastic chain guides throughout the oil pan, the works. Dad was understandably frustrated but he's a good dad and has always, well, coddled isn't quite the word, but he bought her a cheap Honda Accord since she didn't have basically any money at the time, and we hauled it all the way down to Denver for her, and hauled the Cobalt back home.

As a testament to how well GM builds an engine Dad and I dug the shrapnel out of the oil pan, and slapped it back together with a new timing set, I think two valves, and a couple gaskets. We didn't bother to check the head or valve guides, didn't inspect a single bearing apart from the cam since we had to remove those anyway and called it good enough. I bought the car from Dad for $1500 and have since put on 15-20k miles, not exactly easy ones either. That little engine still pops off every day and runs to redline like the little sowing machine it is and is the only decent component in that car.

Continuing my sisters tradition of neglect I think I'm approaching 10k miles now on the cheapest dino oil I could find at the time. I really should change it soon, but ¯_(ツ)_/¯, I'll get to it eventually.

[trivet]

@pickup_man
One thing I've found with GM cars: The cheaper they are, the stronger they run.

The Chevette would rust away before the engine quit.
The Cavalier would never die, despite how much you wanted it to.
The Cobalt is the newer version of the Cavalier.

Hmmmmmmmmm.......cheap Chevy's that run forever all start with "C".

Must stand for Can't quit.

[way2blu]

@pickup_man GM’s basically the USA’s equivalent of Toyota when it comes to making long-lasting motors. Both companies seem to engineer their engines for the most neglectful use cases imaginable.

In another post I mentioned how my MR2 was overheating for a solid 20 minutes of driving before I found a safe place to pull over and cool off. The number of parts that needed replacing afterwards was zero. Fresh coolant, and running like new.

That Chevy does deserve an oil change soon, hahaha

[pickup_man]

@trivet Dad had a Corsica when I was growing up, same story. Everything about that car was worn out, falling apart and terrifying, it ran poorly, but started every. single. time without hesitation. We traded it for an oxy/acy torch at 180k thinking it was near end of life. The next owner proceeded to put at least another 50k on it, possibly more.

[trivet]

@pickup_man

C orsica. Of course!

[WhoIsTheLeader]

@trivet said in The dumbest thing I did to a car:

@pickup_man
One thing I've found with GM cars: The cheaper they are, the stronger they run.

The Chevette would rust away before the engine quit.
The Cavalier would never die, despite how much you wanted it to.
The Cobalt is the newer version of the Cavalier.

Hmmmmmmmmm.......cheap Chevy's that run forever all start with "C".

Must stand for Can't quit.

Unless it's a Cruze with the 1.4T. Fortunately, I have the carryover base 1.8 that was in the Cobalt before it.

[derp]

GM cars will run poorly longer than most cars will run. At least, that's the usual quip I hear about them.

Dumbest thing I did in a car was try to drive home in a snow/ice storm in my Audi A4 with AWD.....On summer tires.

Small hill to a T intersection, can only turn left or right because there's a lake if you keep going forward. I hit the brakes and didn't even slow down. Thankfully I was able to sort of steer/aim for a tree, which caught the car and kept me from going in to the lake. Car ended up with only minor pillar, fender, and mirror damage. No broken windows, no air bag deployment. Drove the car for another while before a flood totalled it while I was sleeping.

[pickup_man]

@way2blu I'm sure we've all heard the popular saying, that a Chevy will run poorly longer than most cars will run period. I've been around, and owned enough GM cars that I believe that to it's fullest. Which reflecting back, there's a surprising amount of GM cars in my relatively short past, might warrant it's own post.

Yeah, I should probably get to that lol, might as well do that this weekend.

[ClassicDatsunDebate]

@trivet We probably all have similar stories I'm sure. I ran my first car out of coolant. I also ran a Beetle without oil....I added oil "by sound" in that thing.
As I exited out of my mid-teens, I finally got edumacated on the workings of a car, which turned into my hobby and addiction.
Even with thinking I did everything to transfer my knowledge to my daughter....she toasted her first two beater cars for lack of fluids.

[trivet]

@classicdatsundebate said in The dumbest thing I did to a car:

my daughter....she toasted her first two beater cars for lack of fluids.

So many comments....must refrain.......ignore the voices in my head

[VincentMalamute]

@trivet said in The dumbest thing I did to a car:

Had this situation been repeated on my car, I could look back and remember a time when 'I' was the dumb ass and how my father handled it.
And then I would kill him.

Ha! Got me with that last sentence!

The Chevette would rust away before the engine quit.

That engine had about half the horsepower as my Craftsman garden tractor so it wasn't a heavily stressed engine!