JosieBWay

Hey guys,
Whoever lives in the Philly area- I advise you never ever to take your car to the Metro Acura dealership to be serviced. I took my car in for the 5000 mile service, which is basically an oil and filter change. Had a 4:30pm appt and didn't finish til 6:30pm, even though they told me it would take 45 min to 1 hr.

BUT the 2 hours of waiting wasn't even the worst part. I understand that techs get backed up or whatever. The worst part was, I got the service on Wednesday and on Saturday (THREE DAYS later), my oil light goes on as I am driving to my graduation. I call my dealership and tell them I'm bringing my car in to be looked at because it's pretty obvious someone F'ed up on Wednesday. The guy tells me there's only one tech working on Sat. and that I'd have to wait til Mon. I say that is unacceptable and insist he sees me ASAP since it is most likely their screw up.

As I am arguing (in a nice way) with this guy, my battery light goes on and I lose power! No acceleration, no AC, no power steering... nada. I tell the guy over the phone and he seems very unconcerned, still insisting that he can't see my car til Monday. I hang up on his ass and figure I'd drive it over there anyway and argue with him face to face. I turn off and on the ignition and the battery seemed to reset or whatever, so I was able to drive to the dealership with just the oil light on.

I leave my car there, come back from graduation (I made it in the nick of time thanks to my dad and his trouble-free Jeep!), and the same asshole pretty much hands me my keys and brushes me off with a sorry, lame explanation of "Oh, apparently a seal came loose on your car." Then he turns around and starts talking to someone else. I call him back over and ask if that can affect my battery, and all he says is "yeah" and turns again to talk to someone else. I call him back over again and ask if there was damage done to my engine, he says "Shouldn't be" and again turns away from me. I just left cuz otherwise I was so angry I would've driven a car right over his ass. Felt to me like he was covering something up and didn't want to give me any details.

The dealership customer satisfaction people that call all the time will be getting an earful from me!

Anyway, does any of this make sense or sound familiar to anyone? What happened to my car? My car seems fine today, so I'm not going to worry about it too much, but I can't help being a little paranoid now.

Thanks for letting me vent... I'm going back to my normal mechanic. Screw Metro!

Josie

Bass Mechanic

dude if you drove your car with the oil light on you just jacked your engine. and i dont know if warranty will cover it. im sure it clearly says what to do if the oil light comes on. the answer is not to DRIVE the car to the dealer its to call for a tow.
as inconvienient as it may be to be stranded and admittedly not your fault you should never never drive a car with the oil light on, that means there is no oil pressure and therefore your bearings and pistons and especially cam lobes are running metal to metal and you just wasted your engine or took about 100,000 miles off it.
damn son i would have expected that from my ex-girlfriend, even my wife knows better then to drive with the oil light on.

id888

Wouldn't a low oil light simply mean low oil pressure, not necessarily impending doom? I'm not saying that low oil pressure is a good thing, but it can't be the same as driving with no oil.

I wish I had an oil pressure meter in the TSX like I did in my old Supra... Mmmm... Supra...

biker

You should never drive a car with an oil light on. While Hondas are very good they can't undo someone else's mistake and in times like that you just can't just blame them - you have to take some action yourself.

Do you even know where the dipstick is? Even if you are not willing to do the work on your car the least you can do is take a look at the dipstick.

As Bass said the problem caused by driving with the oil light on would have only been obvious when the engine seized. Short of that - there's no way to tell how many miles you took off the life of the engine.

You should never accept an appointment with any business at 4:30PM - that's when people are at their most mistake prone or careless.

You might also want to stay of the phone while driving and pay attention to what your car is telling you!!!!

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

You really should have pulled over as soon as the light came on. Why didn't you just call TLC to get a tow? They're pretty quick and you would have done less potential damage to the engine.

JosieBWay

OK, to make the post shorter I didn't put in all the details. I guess I should have explained more since some people are jumping to unfair conclusions.

I pulled over as soon as the oil light went on and checked my dipstick. Yes, I know where the dipstick it. There was plenty of oil in my car. I also called my neighbor and had him check my parking spot to see if there were any oil spots there, and there weren't. So, that's when I called my dealer and told them I was on my way (2.5 miles away). BTW, he's the one that told me to drive my car to the place. And I had an ear piece in, so no need to lecture me on cell phone use in the car. Save that for the cell phone post. Biker, are all Swiss people are condescending as you or are you just special? Don't talk to me like I am 5 years old please. It doesn't help any situation. Thanks!

Mokos23

she's a lady gentlemen. :P

Bass Mechanic

the only time it is safe to drive with the oil light on is if
1 you know there is oil in the pan,
2 you know the oil sending unit is defective. you can be reasonably sure that the engine is getting oil. however since you and the dealer couldnt prove the sending unit was defective that can only mean 1 thing, either no oil at all or pressure too low. either can be damaging.
i think fortunatly for your sake since the dealer told you to drive the car like that i think they assume responcibility rather than getting you a tow.
logic tells me that having this problem right after an oil change spells clearly that the oil either leaked out or they did somthing to prevent the oil from reaching the internals or perhaps somehow knocked the sending unit wire off the sending unit.
unless they can give you hard proof that your engine wasn't starved for oil i would make them replace the engine under warranty.

biker

Josie, like many others on the board you incorrectly assume that since I'm posting from Switzerland I'm Swiss.

If you would have put some of those details into your first post maybe you would have gotten a different response.

Once all the issues with this problem are resolved by the dealer there's not a whole lot more that they'll do for you.

There's no way Acura will give a new engine in the scenario you described - nor do you want to have that done or advertized in the long run - unless you know for sure you will keep the car for 10+ years.