This, folks, is what 83,000-plus miles of driving wear and tear does to the oil of your engine. It cooks it, reduces it, until it’s little more than reconstituted dinosaur paste that isn’t doing one bit of good for your engine. This car, an Audi TT 3.2, somehow made it that far with the engine in this condition before something finally failed. This brought the car into the shop, which allowed a tech to pull off a cover and take a look at the internals. A hint for our non-car friends: if all of the mechanics at a dealership suddenly migrate to your car and it’s not on fire, something is really destroyed and the chances are pretty decent that you might be responsible. The individual who posted the pictures at TDIClub Forums believes that the individual kept adding oil every time the level seemed low, but never bothered to actually change the freaking oil.
(Courtesy: Worldcarfans via TDIClub.com)
I’ve saved one of these pictures on my mobile so I can send it to my Dad early in the morning on 1 April, asking for money for repairs.
For the opposite take on this – a mate of mine was driving from Manchester to Newcastle after in his words – filling the oil up. He noticed his car was not running properly, pulled in and called the RAC.
Imagine the RAC guy’s suprise when he popped the valve cover and noticed the whole engine was full of oil!
How did he escape a total hydraulic lock up?
The luck of the Irish!
That is going to be an expensive lesson for the owner. It serves them right, that’s car abuse. It trips me out the people that drive with no clue how to operate their vehicle.
I wonder if the car owner got mad at the tech because of this. I work in a repair facility and have had people get mad at us when they broke down. one guy even demanded ” and who is going to pay for this?” and I replied ” the person who did not take care of it would be my guess”
Oil changes on an Audi are expensive. But, not as expensive as replacing its engine. I bet the customer is complaining to Audi Customer Service that he wasn’t told he had to change the oil. Or better, his Audi didnt tell him.
WOW!!!!
Wow, and I felt guilty about waiting 5,000 miles to change the oil on the Crown Vic this weekend. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to own cars.
I’m wondering what finally failed.
Back in the ’90s I worked with a guy who bought a new Pontiac sedan. GM advertised “no maintenance for 75,000 miles!” or something like that, so my coworker assumed that meant the oil as well as the plugs, belts, etc. He went over 70K miles without changing the oil. It cost him an engine rebuild when he finally took the car in for its first service. He told me that the Pontiac service manager said he wasn’t the first owner to make that fatal assumption.
Could have been worse. They might never added oil in the first place
Mmmm…crunchy.
Back in 2006 I worked at a now-closed Lincoln/Mercury dealer when we had an ’03 Explorer with a 4.0L SOHC pull into the service department clattering and misfiring to beat all hell. Tech put it up on a lift and noticed the grey factory installed oil filter… seems it had never had an oil change in almost 51k miles. Blew my mind that a 4.0L SOHC made it that far without an oil change as those are gawdawful complicated engines.
I did tear down as an auto machinist for years and occasionally these engines come in and we all stare at them.
the problem is that people don’t realize that oil filters have a bypass and once the filter is in bypass nothing is getting filtered anymore. The other thing is Not maintenancing the PCV valve and filters. The more mileage your car has the more its blowing oil vapor back into the intake and gumming everything up.
I cut open many oil filters and put PCV catch cans in vehicles. Makes a large difference.