Engine seizure after service

chewie71

Hi, I am looking for some advice and opinions after having my car serviced recently. I drive a Smart Four two which does not have a drain point for the oil as this has to be pumped out to be replaced.

Having had my car serviced at a local independent Smart garage recently, within four days the car broke down and this was initially thought to be from a defective starter motor.

Having finally managed to get the car to a separate local garage, they informed me it was not the starter motor but that there was no oil hence the engine had seized.

Apart from the obvious such as massive oil leak (no sign of this i.e. no drips or excessive smoking) can anybody give me any ideas why my car would lose over 3 litres of oil in 4 days. I am currently leaning towards the servicing garage not replenishing my oil after servicing.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

molerat

How many miles did you do in those 4 days - did the oil pressure light not come on ?

Retrogamer

It sounds like they might have forgot to fill it with oil or for some reason underfilled it by quite a lot.

As mentioned above though, did the oil light not come on? This usually comes on with low oil pressure or low oil

Strider590

Ahhhh, no doubt the result of focusing on targets before customer service. This sort of thing is becoming more and more common these days.
Unfortunately the blame will land on the service tech and not the pr1ck that set the unrealistic targets.

One problem though, an engine wouldn't normally run for more than 60 seconds with no oil at all.

Stoke

How the oil light didn't come on is beyond me? To be fair, it's nicknamed the idiot light because by the time it comes on, your engine is pretty much !!!!ed anyway, but it still should have come on.

It sounds like it's been catastrophically underfilled, a mistake that isn't easy to make unless you're a complete spanner. Perhaps he read the wrong car?

chewie71

Hi, about 300 miles, no warning lights.

marlot

Sounds a pretty clear case of little/no oil.

Bantex_2

I would have thought that the no oil would have started to make a few interesting noises before it seized.

Stoke

chewie71 wrote: »

Hi, about 300 miles, no warning lights.

Yeah 300 miles is definitely possible if the car was underfilled.

Really, you need to get onto the garage and inform them that you need a new engine.

Stoke

Bantex wrote: »

I would have thought that the no oil would have started to make a few interesting noises before it seized.

Hmm not necessarily. Depends how little oil. I remember the Watchdog where they filled a Golf with no oil and it screamed (a noise that goes through me to this day), cried a bit and died.

However a friend of mine had a serious oil leak in his old Peugeot 306 after the sump split part way through a trip. The oil light didn't come on but the car simply got harder to drive and eventually stopped part way down the road. No noise whatsoever. It just stopped.

Joe_Horner

marlot wrote: »

Sounds a pretty clear case of little/no oil.

Not if it covered 300 miles it doesn't!

Frankly, at this stage I'd be questioning the second garage's diagnosis rather than (or at least as well as) the first one's work. You would have heard it if it had no oil because even the best engine will sound like a bag of spanners as the big ends knock themselves to pieces.

Strider's 60 second esimate is maybe a little pessimistic (check out youtube for vids of people trying this delibereately) but 300 miles on no oil just isn't feasible!