I have basic automotive skills, but nothing compared to many of you here, so I’m going to tell my tale and pose a question or two.
We inherited a 2011 Acura MDX with about 130k miles from my in-laws about six months ago. They don’t know anything about cars, but have loads of money to pay other people to fix things. We don’t have a lot of money and my wife has decided to use the MDX as her main vehicle.
My in-laws reported the dipstick pull tab broke off so the oil couldn’t be checked. I didn’t consider that a big deal because it would be easy for me to do an oil change whenever I felt it was needed— hopefully by a time or mileage interval and not because of bad sounds coming from the engine.
My in-laws claimed they were quoted some wildly high amount of money in order to fix the problem. I did a little research and it looked like that might be true if certain damage had been done.
That’s small potatoes compared to the other issue. My in-laws reported they would drive the car “until the oil light comes on” and then add a quart of two of oil. I was astounded they didn’t have anyone try to fix this issue. They claimed their mechanic told them it was OK to just keep adding oil because they didn’t want to pay a lot of money to get repairs done. My mother-in-law told my wife not to worry about it and to have me not try to rack up huge repair bills by asking a mechanic to fix it.
I did a lot of reading and talked to a few people, and I figured the simplest way to start trying to solve the problem was by replacing the PCV valve . I bought the part a while ago, but the weather has been terrible here and I had been unable to do any work.
A couple days ago the car exhibited blue smoke upon startup and my wife reported the same thing when she was on hills. For the record, our driveway does slope uphill slightly. Observing this made me want to change the PCV valve as soon as possible so I did so this morning. I have no prior experience changing PCV valves in any vehicle.
I changed the PCV valve and then started the car while checking under the hood for anything unusual. Everything under the hood looked and sounded normal. There was a puff of blue smoke upon starting, and I hope it was just residual.
Shockingly, the car died about two minutes later. I waited a minute or so and then restarted it and it was fine. I forgot to look to see if any blue exhaust came out. I then drove the car around the neighborhood and everything seemed normal.
I came home, shut the car off, let it sit for about 15 minutes, then started it again. No blue exhaust and everything seems normal. I then shut the car off.
My questions for you all:
Should I worry about how the car died immediately after I replaced the PCV valve?
Without having a working dipstick, I was thinking of changing the oil and measuring what came out, then starting all over, filling it to factory specifications. After that, I’m guessing I could check it frequently to see if it still consumes oil. Would that be a good strategy to determine if replacing the PCV valve helped?
I’d like to thank everyone for taking their time to read this.
We inherited a 2011 Acura MDX with about 130k miles from my in-laws about six months ago. They don’t know anything about cars, but have loads of money to pay other people to fix things. We don’t have a lot of money and my wife has decided to use the MDX as her main vehicle.
My in-laws reported the dipstick pull tab broke off so the oil couldn’t be checked. I didn’t consider that a big deal because it would be easy for me to do an oil change whenever I felt it was needed— hopefully by a time or mileage interval and not because of bad sounds coming from the engine.
My in-laws claimed they were quoted some wildly high amount of money in order to fix the problem. I did a little research and it looked like that might be true if certain damage had been done.
That’s small potatoes compared to the other issue. My in-laws reported they would drive the car “until the oil light comes on” and then add a quart of two of oil. I was astounded they didn’t have anyone try to fix this issue. They claimed their mechanic told them it was OK to just keep adding oil because they didn’t want to pay a lot of money to get repairs done. My mother-in-law told my wife not to worry about it and to have me not try to rack up huge repair bills by asking a mechanic to fix it.
I did a lot of reading and talked to a few people, and I figured the simplest way to start trying to solve the problem was by replacing the PCV valve . I bought the part a while ago, but the weather has been terrible here and I had been unable to do any work.
A couple days ago the car exhibited blue smoke upon startup and my wife reported the same thing when she was on hills. For the record, our driveway does slope uphill slightly. Observing this made me want to change the PCV valve as soon as possible so I did so this morning. I have no prior experience changing PCV valves in any vehicle.
I changed the PCV valve and then started the car while checking under the hood for anything unusual. Everything under the hood looked and sounded normal. There was a puff of blue smoke upon starting, and I hope it was just residual.
Shockingly, the car died about two minutes later. I waited a minute or so and then restarted it and it was fine. I forgot to look to see if any blue exhaust came out. I then drove the car around the neighborhood and everything seemed normal.
I came home, shut the car off, let it sit for about 15 minutes, then started it again. No blue exhaust and everything seems normal. I then shut the car off.
My questions for you all:
Should I worry about how the car died immediately after I replaced the PCV valve?
Without having a working dipstick, I was thinking of changing the oil and measuring what came out, then starting all over, filling it to factory specifications. After that, I’m guessing I could check it frequently to see if it still consumes oil. Would that be a good strategy to determine if replacing the PCV valve helped?
I’d like to thank everyone for taking their time to read this.
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