My Jiffy Lube Sludge Story...

A

AdmiralYoda

Joined
Jan 23, 2013
Messages
329
Location
MA
Okay, for entertainment I've been reading all these sludge stories on BITOG lately and enjoying the before and after's. Here is my worst story.

When I was about 17-18 in the late 90's I worked at a Jiffy Lube. We were actually a good shop and all of us were gearheads and for the most part knew what we were doing. A young lady came in with a nice new car, it was a GM product but I don't even remember what it was but she was putting her work in and bought herself a new car to reward herself.

She pulls in and its making a pretty bad clatter. It was only a year old and her dad said she needed to get an oil change ASAP. Apparently she took the 75 or 100k mile factory service seriously....as in no factory scheduled maintenance until 100k. As in that's about the time you need new plugs, transmission fluid, coolant, etc. But she was adamant that also meant oil changes!

Well at 25k miles she hadn't changed her oil yet. We took the plug out and NOTHING! But the dipstick showed plenty of black tar....so the guy in the bay put a screwdriver in and knocked out the chunk blocking the drain hole..... Glug, chunk, glug, glug, chunk.... It was like draining gear oil out of a tractor.

Even with the new oil in there you could tell that engine was in trouble. We informed her of her mistake and even showed her the owners manual where it said 3,000 mile OCI's. She cried since she was spending about 75% of her income on car payments lol. Never saw her again. I wonder which one of us ended up with her trade in?

Any good stories from the BITOG folks?
 
so the guy in the bay put a screwdriver in and knocked out the chunk blocking the drain hole..... Glug, chunk, glug, glug, chunk.... It was like draining gear oil out of
Click to expand...
LOL

In the early 1980s I worked in a automotive machine shop. The things I've seen. :oops:
 
Very odd, as I seen cars go way longer and the oil drained out fine, although black. It the scenario you describe, the vehicle would not have been able to drive into the shop
 
My father had a customer who was a landscaper. He had a square body GMC that threw a rod (it's always either #1 or #2). Since it was summer break, I got to swap in a rebuilt unit. I got it installed with out much hassle.

Out of curiosity, I pulled the oil pan on the trashed engine to take a look. The oil that remained was like NGLI-1. A stick a main cap bolt into the sludge and it just "floated" in it.

A few years later, same truck was back with another thrown rod.
 
When I worked for a Japanese OEM, certain model warranty replacement engines would come back to the national HQ. After enough accumulated, some engineers from Japan would fly over and tear them down. There was one particular model engine, in a luxury model car, that was on collection, and almost every one had holes in the block. The engineers told me that the customers of these cars didn't do any oil changes, and by 23k miles, the sludge would plug up things and a rod would fail. It was like setting your watch they said.
 
When I worked at a Tire and Lube, I recall many examples of "extended" OCIs. Like the OP's story, the common factor almost always included a young lady.
 
I have a very similar story. My JL stint was 2002-2007

Couple was moving a long distance, many back and forth trips. Lost track of miles and such, they must've at least checked the oil periodically because I don't remember horrible noises and oil actually came out, but it was bad and clumpy.

35,000 miles!!!
 
Coworker had a Sunfire he didn't maintain at all. Kept coming to me for emergent repairs until I let him find a new mechanic. He always went over on his state inspections and once bragged about bribing someone for a sticker. He asked me:

Hey when it rains, my car runs rough, do you think I need an oil change?

Well, you probably need an oil change, but you also need plugs and wires.

Hey, my parking brake light is on, but I don't use that, is it because of you changing my headlight switch?

We should probably look at that. Look underneath, find a metal brake line that's splitting from rust, that would have been caught in a legitimate inspection.

He never changed his coolant, and rust ate through some top radiator pipe that seemed to compensate for GM not knowing what car their 2.2 OHV motor would wind up in. I got the job of fixing that, and preemptively did his serp belt and oil without his asking.

I also did his alternator, on the side of the street in the ghetto, with a bunch of people in a bus stop watching. This of course was due to him thinking he needed a battery, because the battery light was on. I can give him a pass on that one, it's a dumb idiot light design.

He never turned into a "car guy" and became slow to pay me, so I let him figure is stuff out on his own after that.
 
As the OP, I'll also share a horror story from the same place.

A soccer mom comes in with her minivan full of kids ready for practice. She wants an oil change....and fast!

Now we were constantly grilled by management on how well we vacuumed the cars, washed the windshields, checked the tires, filled the washer fluid, etc.

Here comes this lady like a boot camp drill instructor. She is grilling us to not check this, why are you vacuuming that,my tires are fine, dont touch my floor mats....just change my freaking oil NOW!!

I was the guy at the top of the bay that did the computer work and added the fluids. She was up my butt asking why I needed to type this in, type that in...who cares what my coolant level was....just get me out of here!!!

She had us all flustered and the manager was on us to get the car out of here....now! It's good, stop the normal stuff and get it out!!!!!

I forgot to add the oil.

She came back after soccer practice with her oil light on and the engine squeaking. I knew immediately what had happened. I filled it up with 20W-50 and told her she was rushing us so much that it left half a quart low.

I knew I screwed up and snuck in a quart of our "high mileage engine treatment" which was like molasses.

Never saw her again....
 
Last edited:
AdmiralYoda said:
Okay, for entertainment I've been reading all these sludge stories on BITOG lately and enjoying the before and after's. Here is my worst story.

When I was about 17-18 in the late 90's I worked at a Jiffy Lube. We were actually a good shop and all of us were gearheads and for the most part knew what we were doing. A young lady came in with a nice new car, it was a GM product but I don't even remember what it was but she was putting her work in and bought herself a new car to reward herself.

She pulls in and its making a pretty bad clatter. It was only a year old and her dad said she needed to get an oil change ASAP. Apparently she took the 75 or 100k mile factory service seriously....as in no factory scheduled maintenance until 100k. As in that's about the time you need new plugs, transmission fluid, coolant, etc. But she was adamant that also meant oil changes!

Well at 25k miles she hadn't changed her oil yet. We took the plug out and NOTHING! But the dipstick showed plenty of black tar....so the guy in the bay put a screwdriver in and knocked out the chunk blocking the drain hole..... Glug, chunk, glug, glug, chunk.... It was like draining gear oil out of a tractor.

Even with the new oil in there you could tell that engine was in trouble. We informed her of her mistake and even showed her the owners manual where it said 3,000 mile OCI's. She cried since she was spending about 75% of her income on car payments lol. Never saw her again. I wonder which one of us ended up with her trade in?

Any good stories from the BITOG folks?
Click to expand...
Good BITOG stories require pictures!!
 
I have shared before, but had a neighbor buy a brand new 2017 Nissan Frontier truck. He used it as his daily driver, plus pulled a trailer with lawn equipment on weekends. One Friday afternoon, he asked if I could help him change the oil. I said sure. He went and bought the filter and oil. Bought a 5 quart jug and it took 6 quarts or so, so I gave him some oil (us BITOG folks always have extra!)

I looked at dipstick. it was at the "add" mark. I asked him if he had been checking it? He said No. Odometer was at 23K......never had an oil change. Drained the oil (black, but still liquid.) Oil filter was a bear to get off (Nissan OEM, factory installed.)

Got everything changed. Told him I recommend he does it at least every 7500 miles or more. Plus, I told him I would worry about transmission fluids also.

He changed it next time at 13K....so, he's getting better. The Supertech filter (Wix at the time) had torn ( I cut it open.)

We moved a year after that, but saw him a couple of years ago, and he still had the truck, so, go Nissan! Scary thing about him, he washed the truck all the time. Looked great. So, if he sold it, someone would think they're getting a great truck........

LOL
 
As a guy who managed a company fleet, I can tell you that salespeople are some of the worst, and will happily go 20k miles + because they just don't have time to get an oil change!!

One 2.7 Ecoboost in an F150 was smoking badly when we finally fired that sales person. I personally drove it for a while, and did a 3000, then 5000 mile oil change with subsequent 5000 mile changes after that using Motorcraft oil at the Ford dealer. The truck made it to 150k when we traded it.

Men were the worst offenders. Ladies tended to keep up on the maintenance just fine, following the OLM and getting the oil changed when it told them to. The men would just reset the OLM.
 
Back in the day as a mechanic at a Toyota dealer, I got to see the supposed "Sludge" engines. The 'problem' was that leasing in particular became popular in that time-frame, and Toyota had a sterling reputation for reliability. You can imagine what happened. Since lots of people were leasing their ultra-reliable Camrys, they just drove them. Around 40k miles they'd start noticing problems like unpleasant engine noises, or the oil light would stay on. They'd come in, and low and behold the engine was on it's original factory fill (or what was left of it).

Toyota, trying to keep these idiots (sorry, customers...) happy, would approve whatever remedy was deemed best: New short or long block in some cases, or a rebuild. As a result Toyota got the undeserved reputation of certain engines being sludge prone for several years.
 
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