Did I kill my Subaru?

Noticed a knocking in engine stopped and check oil it was dry on dipstick was due for oil change tomorrow. Had it towed back to my house what should I do put oil in it and see if knocking goes away or did I kill my car 2008 Subaru impreza

Reported for forum change.

Love. That’s what your Subaru needs.

Maybe not kill it, but you sure wounded it.
If the knocking goes away when you add oil, drive it until the engine seizes, and them junk it (or rebuild it).

Knocking usually comes from having the wrong gas in it, although a ticking noise can come from having a cracked cylinder head. Was it a really deep knocking, or could it have been a tick?

The thing about the Subaru Impreza-- we have a 2006-- is that they have an automatic shut-down if the oil gets too low. It can have two quarts in it, and show nothing on the dipstick, so it wasn’t completely dry, and it shouldn’t have overheated (oil does some of the cooling of the engine) to the point of causing the cylinder head to crack, because the car should have shut down from the oil being low, or the engine being hot before that happened.

Did you do something like drive through a deep puddle that could have splashed water onto the top of the engine? I know Indiana has been having torrential rain, and I’m being very careful with my new car not to get water up in the engine compartment.

Imprezas are apparently notorious for mysteriously losing oil. Ours does, but we can’t find leaks, and we don’t smell burn oil, or see it in the exhaust. We’ve had everything but the head and block regasketed. We had the valve cover done under warranty, and the read main seal done when we had the clutch replaced. We also had the oil pan gasket done under warranty because it was losing oil, and they were just replacing gaskets everywhere hoping to stop it.

I think it must somehow burn it, but not during idle. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it’s all I can think of, because there’s no burning oil smell when we run it and stand next to it.

Anyway, the advice to drive it into the ground if it starts when you replace the oil is probably correct, unless you have emissions tests where you are, and it is burning oil during idle. It won’t pass inspection. However, I think it will start-- but if it doesn’t, it may be because it went into automatic shut-down. Any garage can turn it back on for you, though.

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I would put oil in it and see what happens, but my best guess is that the knocking noise is either the crankshaft and main bearings or it’s the oil lifters. With a little luck it’s the oil lifters as those will make a loud tapping or knocking sound just from the lack of oil and while you’ve probably done them some damage, you might end up with a lot of miles still left in the engine. If it’s the crankshaft and/or bearings, that’s a bit more severe. Anything is fixable, but at that point you may want to consider how much the car is worth vs. how much the repair will cost.

Best of luck to you.

If the oil light ever comes on, that’s a STOP IMMEDIATELY type of problem.

Also, oil doesn’t just disappear. If it all went at once, then there’s probably been some sort of catastrophic failure. On the other hand, if it just slowly “leaked” out then it may just be an old engine with very badly worn piston rings. If the engine is losing enough oil that it is in danger of running out of oil between oil changes then the engine is likely on its last legs anyway.

Probably.

Economically at least. A rebuilt or used engine install will cost a good percentage of the cars value. Adding oil to see what happens is a reasonable strategy at this point. If you take it to a professional they’re either gonna walk away due to the age and value of the car or the first thing they’ll inspect is your payment potential.

Were any warning lights on? If not you might have gotten lucky and the rattling was just lack of oil pressure in the hydraulic valve lifters. Good luck.

Ehhh, it depends on where the oil went, and what happens when you put oil in it again. I’m hoping that you were listening carefully, and the knocking was actually tapping lifters that are starved for oil. I’ve revved a Ford V-8 while racing to the point where it had evacuated the oil pan into the top of the engine, and the lifters tapped mightily until I had backed out of it for several seconds. That engine seemed none the worse for wear, and I saw it running around years after I sold it.

On the other hand, even if you have run it completely dry, all hope isn’t lost. My sister smashed the oil filter of a 3.8L Ford V-6 on road debris, and drove the car a couple of miles home. It was totally dry by the time she got it there, but she had enough sense to not run it hard. That engine lasted until she sold the car a couple of years later, and may have gone on for years after it left my view. So, engines can handle no oil for a short time without fatal harm. It’s when you run them hard or for a long time with no oil that terrible damage happens.

And on the inevitable third hand, the knocking could be pre-detonation from the engine building up heat and not being able to retard the timing enough to prevent it, since the fuel’s cooking off from the temp of the head. This is pretty much the worst, as the heat can turn the engine into a solid lump of metal. So, did you have a check engine light when this happened? Did the engine shut off cleanly when you stopped it, or did it run-on for a second afterward (dieseling)?

Get an old but sturdy cardboard box.
Put in it: two bottles of motor oil, a bottle if windshield washer fluid. Whatever.
Place this in trunk and maybe use a bungee cord to secure it.

The flashlight goes in the glove box.

It can save you a tow job and a night of worry about your engine.

Hello chobbs911. Sounds like you may have spun a bearing, which would not be a surprise if the rod or crank bearings were starved of oil. If this is the case then you are up for a rebuild. The turbocharged wrx models will spin bearings under heavy loads even with oil in the crank.

I read that as “oil filters” and was racking my brain trying to figure out how oil filters could make noise. :slight_smile:

Yes, the first sign of low oil will usually be hydraulic lifters collapsing and making valve train noise. If you stop right away and add oil, the damage can be minimal.

I once read in a book that there were no curse words in Japanese.

I’m not sure if you’ve killed your car, but I’m pretty sure that if you wanted to ask it directly, it would surely want to learn English first.

I think it’s safe to say that if you’ve managed to get the oil filter to make noise you’ve definitely done something very bad to the engine. :slight_smile:

Japanese curse words:
http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/insults.html

Waddya mean it “wasn’t designed to filter rod bolts”?

Oh, and there’s a fourth hand. I myself ran my WRX low on il at one point. I was lazy and put the filter on with the wrong wrench and crimped it, a pinhole develops after driving it for awhile, and squirts oil all over the bottom of the car. Easy peasy. I actually caught it from the smell, not the lifters knocking, but there was nothing on the dipstick by the time I caught it. 2 quarts came out of the pan.

I think your 2008 has the same EJ25 block as my 2012. Mine’s at 105K not-gentle-at-all miles, around 70k of those since the “incident”. It’s a fairly durable engine.

And to belabor the point with a fifth hand, I’ve turned exactly one engine into a non-rebuildable meteorite. (Skip to the next paragraph if you don’t care about the particulars) It was the 1.6CVH (constant vibration and harshness) in an '82 US market Ford Escort. I had originally loved, but learned to hate that car. My dad had it as a daily driver at one point, and I inherited it because I could reliably drive a manual. Kind of peppy, and ok handling, either the world’s best Chevette or the world’s worst Mini, I can’t decide. I hated it by then because I had already spent a spring break replacing the steering rack in a car that wasn’t designed to be rebuilt, and I could see the other repairs coming while I was under there. There were other cars my family owned (some I had paid for, but I was still viewed as their kid, so my name wasn’t on the title) that I worked on that I could drive, but this was the daily roller skate I had at the time, and it had been nursed along for years.

So, when driving home from work one night, the ultimate idiot light, the “Engine” light came on. It served double duty as either an oil pressure warning or a temp warning. For my purposes, it didn’t matter which. I knew we didn’t have any other inline 4 cylinders that my dad could shoehorn into this car, but my dad had rebuilt many an engine that others would have given up on, so there was only one way out of this car. It took about 20 miles of freeway driving, and it was obvious that it was useless as a engine long before it was completely done, but it would not crank the next day.

So, really, it’s hard to kill even something like a 1.6CVH when you get down to it. Good luck!

Someone made the comment that their Subaru shut down when it was low on oil. As a former Subaru mechanic I can assure you that is not correct. I guess unless you consider driving a car with no oil in it until it freezes up solid automatic shut down. Cars and trucks do not shut down from low oil or overheating due to safety concerns. If your going around a corner and your engine shuts off because of a loss of oil pressure the power steering and power brakes would be lost as well. A lawyers wet dream. So never count on a safety system to save your butt especially when it doesn’t exist. Put oil in it and fire it up. Maybe you’ll get lucky. If it still knocks check into a used engine or a factory short block. The heads are probably ok.
Just because someone may try to call me on this some vehicles can and will shut down. They are generally large fleet such as some semi trucks and buses. They give the driver a loud warning along with stop engine or equivalent light. These are usually accompanied by an override switch to allow the driver to continue driving to a safe place to pull over. Good luck.

Aww, I wanna know if the Impreza died. I don’t think it did, but I want to know if I’m right.

I got rid of mine after about 80,000 miles. After several oil consumption surveys after which they did nothing they finally admitted there was a problem due to the class action lawsuit that was being heard. They replaced the engine block free of charge. That seemed to make it a little better but didn’t clear up the problem completely. The lawsuit was settled earlier this year. I think your car might be too old to be effected by it. Oil consumption is a big problem with the brand and one of the reasons why I will never buy another.