While we cannot stress how beneficial is it to work on your own car, a lot of times, many of us just don’t have the luxury of time to tinker with our rides.
Mike owns an Audi S4 and lives in Florida. Here’s what he posted on the Audizine forum.
I already blame myself enough and am aware what I did was stupid by not taking my car to a more trusted shop or doing the work myself but I’ll share this post anyways and be ready for the flaming 🙁
It was not Mike’s fault, as he was pretty busy as he explained below:
I was looking through Groupon and happened over a $49 deal to get a full synthetic oil change at the Valvoline Instant Oil Change place. [edit] Note, I usually do the oil changes myself but its been a little hectic lately. We are selling the house, things are packed up, yada, yada. So I figured, why not do an added 5K interval change at such a cheap price and I’m driving around anyways near there. I cant buy the parts that cheap and it’s Valvoline so whats to lose right? …and there is where my mistake lies and what turned into a 4 hour ordeal that involved police.
Well, involving the police? That certainly can’t be good news.
I pulled up to the oil change place and stayed in the car. A couple of minutes into the change I feel a jarring / ripping sensation through the floor of the car. I’m thinking, “Hmmm, I hope they know to slide the aero belly pan to the rear to let it drop down instead of pulling on it.” …I make a mental note.
A jarring/ripping sensation through the floor of the car? I’ve certainly not felt such odd sensations when I send my car in for servicing.
So now they are at the stage where the person up top starts to pour in the motor oil. He starts to pour it in and stops pretty quickly yelling to the guy below to make sure he drained it all out as it is overflowing. … Mental note number two. Hmm.
Wait what? Guy A starts to pour oil but stops quickly? The Audi S4’s 3.0 TFSI needs about 6.8 litres of engine oil, and that should not overflow quickly. Oh my.
Then Mike sees this.
I’m looking up at the car at first and I see the DSG drain plug right there and there is DSG fluid all over it and dripping. I’m thinking “Why can I see the DSG drain plug? Theres supposed to be an aero pan covering this?” and I’m also thinking…”Oh crap, they drained the DSG fluid.”
What kind of moron takes the trouble to cut a hole in the aero pan, instead of loosening the fasteners? Furthermore, the technician drained all the car’s DSG oil, instead of the engine oil. That explains why he stopped filling up the engine oil so quickly, because it was still full!
As I keep looking up my brain starts to register what it is seeing. Holy crap, this guy cut my car into pieces. My aero pan has a huge hole cut into it. I’m standing in the oil pit now with the tech and the manager and I ask the tech if he did this to my car and if he drained my DSG fluid. He says absolutely not. Well since I am under my car every week and I know no one else was under my car I’m finding that very hard to believe. So I took it upon myself to walk around their oil pit until I found two of these..
The technician even denied cutting the aero pan, but unfortunately for him, Mike works on his car every week.
It looks like this is what happens…
1. Employee cuts a hole in transmission aero pan and drains DSG fluid.
2. Tech tries to put in motor oil and it overflows all over the engine because no engine oil was ever removed.
3. Tech and manager were going to let me drive on my way with no DSG fluid and massively overfilled engine oil in which case id likely be out an engine and transmission.
Thankfully, Valvoline has agreed to compensate Mike for the damages, and will be sending a $1,442.48 (RM6,223.65) cheque.
While we have not come across of such horror stories locally, we want to stress that it is always vital to keep an eye out on your car when it’s in for servicing. There are tales of workshops swapping out good parts for damaged parts, but those cases are rare.
