Running engine without oil...

[Me&MyE]

I’m driving down the highway when my oil light comes on... seconds later I hear a tap tap tap coming from the engine compartment... WTF... I slow down a bit and then silence... the engine has stalled so I coast to the breakdown lane. I get out and open the engine compartment to inspect the engine and I see no evidence of trouble. I look at the rear and see oil splattered on the diffuser so I look under the car for any leaks and see oil pouring out the FRONT. I go to the front and to my horror I see that the oil hose is missing from the oil cooler and all my oil is pouring out on the ground.

I call the dealership and they pick up the car. They checked the engine by removing the oil pan, replaced the oil hose and stated the engine is fine, but I am skeptical. Should I expect the engine to be ok after running without oil on the freeway?

Your thoughts...

[KingOfJericho]

Oh man, that is really bad. I would monitor it closely and assume it's ok. The warrantee should cover this type of thing should you have problems.

[Roger]

From the way you describe it you probably stopped in time. Just keep an eye (or an ear?) on it for a while.
Good Luck!

[dakotan50sw]

When you get the car back etc if it is running well, chge oil and filter@ approx. 500 miles. Have the oil filter cut or buy the tool and do it youself. Have oil content's sent for oil analysis to determine composition of foreign bodies in the oil. Eg. metal- cam is made of different metal than cylinder's etc. Will tell you of excessive wear and were the wear is coming from. I would do this analysis at least twice. Initial is for excess and baseline, second time is for repeated excess wear therefore early failure in the future.

[dakotan50sw]

PS Oil analysis cost's approx. 13.00 to 29.00/ analysis. Labs that do these are listed in many automotive mag's and in aircraft mags . Eg aerotrader. This is not someting exotic, as I do this routinely aircraft engine and occassionaly stored collector car's.
JGF

[Lotus F1]

Originally Posted by dakotan50sw

PS Oil analysis cost's approx. 13.00 to 29.00/ analysis. Labs that do these are listed in many automotive mag's and in aircraft mags . Eg aerotrader. This is not someting exotic, as I do this routinely aircraft engine and occassionaly stored collector car's.
JGF

This is the way to go for sure... Don't take their word for it. I mean really how did they make their determination

[MikeW]

You state that they checked the engine by pulling the oil pan. The question is, what else did they check while the pan is off? If it were mine, I'd sure as hell find out. Consider the rod and main bearings without any oil film. You've got the hard steel journals smacking the relatively soft rod bearings. The main journals spinning without oil isn't much better. I've been thru this before when a timing chain broke and an oil pump quit turning. Ate the hell out of the rod bearings. They don't like going up and down without oil. Had a friend go thru the same thing with a timing chain breaking. After he fixed the bent valves, he drove the car about 5 miles and spun rod bearings. If this had happened in your driveway at an idle, I wouldn't be as concerned. But you said it happened at freeway speed. I've seen lots of rod bearings fail from lack of lubrication.

[Lotuslvr]

Looks like you lost a lot of oil after you stopped, and probably while coasting to a stop so maybe it was never totally empty?

[motododo]

At my regualr job (a major vehicle manufacturer), pre-production vehicles are used regularly to get a head start on photography, TV commercials etc. These vehicles have to be destroyed for liability reason, which basically means they're cut up and thrown away. For fun, we will occasionally dump the oil and see how long it takes them to blow up. We did a high performance engine yesterday and the crank seized in less than 4 minutes.

[tesprit]

+1 on getting the filter cut and looking for metal. I did this on my Mercedes that had oil loss and even though the engine ran fine there were metal chips throughout the filter media--that car was sold within 1 week! The new synthetic oils are pretty good at hanging around on engine parts after a loss of oil pressure, but if you heard a ticking sound and the engine stopped running you must have had some metal on metal contact.

[BR111]

I had an '83 T-bird lose all of its oil immediately following an oil change because of a bad filter seam. Same routine after driving it away from the shop (check engine, tappetty tap, tap). I stopped the car immediately. That happened at 10,000 miles or so. When I eventually sold the car, it had gone 100,000 trouble free miles. So, they can live through this. But, do the oil analysis.

[Me&MyE]

Thanks everyone, I will definitely do the test.

23K miles on the car so I have a little warranty left. Hopefully if there is a major problem it will happen before the warranty expires.

[shay2nak]

wow, that sucks. Hope your engine is/will be running great.

[Raindem]

Originally Posted by BR111

I had an '83 T-bird lose all of its oil immediately following an oil change because of a bad filter seam. Same routine after driving it away from the shop (check engine, tappetty tap, tap). I stopped the car immediately. That happened at 10,000 miles or so. When I eventually sold the car, it had gone 100,000 trouble free miles. So, they can live through this. But, do the oil analysis.

I had the same thing happen with an early 80's Ford (can't recall the model) but wasn't so lucky. The engine didn't seize but after we replaced the oil & filter and started it up it made lots of scary metal noises. Replaced main bearings, replaced rod bearings, but the engine was never the same after that.

[Buz]

I hit some debris on the road in a VW tdi with synthetic oil. I was trying to get off the road and shut it off when it started clanking and I shut it off. It was not run for more than 30 seconds after the hit but the motor was toast. Get your motor checked out thoroughly, bearings, oil analysis, leakdown, boroscope.

[cheech51288]

I hope everything works out. Good Luck.

[cheech51288]

Originally Posted by MikeW

You state that they checked the engine by pulling the oil pan. The question is, what else did they check while the pan is off? If it were mine, I'd sure as hell find out. Consider the rod and main bearings without any oil film. You've got the hard steel journals smacking the relatively soft rod bearings. The main journals spinning without oil isn't much better. I've been thru this before when a timing chain broke and an oil pump quit turning. Ate the hell out of the rod bearings. They don't like going up and down without oil. Had a friend go thru the same thing with a timing chain breaking. After he fixed the bent valves, he drove the car about 5 miles and spun rod bearings. If this had happened in your driveway at an idle, I wouldn't be as concerned. But you said it happened at freeway speed. I've seen lots of rod bearings fail from lack of lubrication.

Hes got a point...I would bring that up with the dealership. The main journals shouldn't be too bad, since the motor didn't sieze, but I would be carefull and if you hear any strange noises from the engine, have it torn down and checked.

[R T]

.... so what exactly was the failure of the hose?

[2-Y-CHROMOSOMES]

If you see an oil light come on pull over turn off the car asap.
the oil warning light is sometimes refered to as an idiots light "no insult intended"

I have not seen many cars recover from this. the tube failure might be warrantied? if so then the resulting broken engine.

I also knew a girl this sort of happened to....her response...you have to put oil in it?
yes....she was blonde

[Devious]

Definately get an oil analysis done. Blackstone labs charges nothing for their kits and $20 for the analysis.

http://www.blackstone-labs.com/gas_engines.html