Engine death: how was I supposed to prevent this without indicators?!?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Keeping it simple.

2014 Kia Soul
70k miles. Purchased used at 25k miles
Regular oil changes.

1 serious problem in 2019, the precise nature of which is locked away, but I expect to get the details from the repair shop on Monday. The nature of the problem relates, though: sitting in traffic, car overheats, dies. I think repair was about $500. As stated, detals I don’t remember except I think iinvolved a leak.

Present day.

Ngine light, nothing else. This has happened before, it was a gas cap. Hmm. I am about 8 miles from home. Getting nearer, weird sounds, feels funny. Stop at a shop, tires needed already, make deal. Need cash, though. Diprive less than a block to kiquor stor, come out, back up, car dies.

Wait for tow. After 30 minutes, engine starts! Rush home, about 3 miles.

Order OBD thingy. 2 non urgent things. I go to AutoZone on the recommendation of a friend and they run their OBD thingy along with something else. I don’t know, but it’s separate and it tests a different system. The AutoZone said the same code I got, There’s nothing wrong with your car, nothing important don’t worry.

After I leave there, the engine light is off. I call him. He says he did not turn it off. My car is probably great and I can get it smogged.

Drive about 6 miles to Walmart. Get tires and an oil change and a new air filter. Read the engine light comes on after I leave there couple miles back to my place few hours later set out to drive 30 miles to the pharmacy. Idle at McDonald’s for about 5 to 10 minutes. Get on the highway and at about mile eight my car is making horrible noises. The red lights are blinking and I can feel it dying. I pull off in the dark and wait for the flatbed.

Nice guy mechanic brings his stuff to my place and before he even runs, it tries to get the engine going and in about three seconds says your engine is screwed. He run some tests. He goes over it and he says your bone dry there is no moisture of any kind you have almost certainly melted your engine and you have to replace it.

Trying not to slit my own throat We discussed how I was supposed to know this. His final conclusion is “yeah they don’t have any kind of gauge.”

He leaves and I call a big Kia dealership and talk to somebody. Answer? “Yeah there is no gauge or indicator for you to know that you’re running out of water and you’re going to melt your engine.”

What? Excuse me? Am I being pumked?

2

Also call Walmart to ask if they talked to check if I had water in my car when they were busy giving it oil and they said no that’s not part of the service because the radiator might be hot and they might hurt and That makes it a safety issue.

I did everything you’re supposed to do. At no point in any of this did anything say “hey, put some freaking water in the car.” Regular maintenance guys don’t check the water. Red engine light tests don’t say it’s dry. You’re getting too hot gauge with just fine.

So how was I supposed to prevent this?

3

It was the check engine light (orange, looks like and old timer engine if you squint) and not the oil pressure light (red looks like Aladdin’s lamp dripping oil)?

Check engine lights are for emissions based errors,
If your oil was low the red light should have come on.

Check engine is something to look into but not typically mission critical.

Oil light means pull the fuck over right now not at the next corner.

That’s what I was taught and what I tell my kids.

If my oil disappeared without an oil light going off id be furious.

EDIT: I missed you just got an oil change from WalMart. Call a lawyer. Even Kia’s don’t just lose the oil. Get other and take pics of the cap, drain plug, filter housing, everything.

4

If you had no, or insufficient, coolant, I’d expect the engine temp gauge to have been pegged in the red, which would have been the indication you should have attended to. Did the temp gauge read high at any point?

5

This is what I would have thought. Every car I’ve had has had a temperature gauge (not just an “idiot light”) that would warn you of the onset of overheating before it became a serious problem, and there would generally be some type of warning light as well. When I’m driving, I’m in the habit of giving all the gauges a quick glance once in a while. If the temp gauge got noticeably more than about halfway up the scale I’d consider it a problem – not an emergency yet, but a problem.

6

Check, check check check. Not even moved, much less in any kind of zone. I always check my gauges as well before there’s anything wrong. Just looking around to see in case I might miss something. And I definitely was checking on the minute. There was any indication that anything was even remotely off. All is well… not.

The situation is insane.

7

MikeG:

It was the engine light. Orange, looks like an engine.

Steady, no blinking.

During the last couple of miles though, when I was getting off the freeway, it started blinking AND the oil light went on and everything kind of went on and you know it’s like my whole car suddenly said “holy shit!”

8

Back in the old days–1980’s or so, the temperature gauge measured the temp of the water/coolant liquid in the radiator. If all the liquid leaked out, it would not register over-heating.

I hope nowadays the tech is better. Am I right?

9

So… you know your car has problems… you don’t go to a mechanic… you keep driving it around until it dies… then you’re surprised that the engine is ruined. Did I get that right?

10

Nope.

After it died when I was backing up, then restarted after I had been waiting for the tow, I drove directly home. And never started it again until after I had run the OBD test and talk to a mechanic friend of mine who lives nowhere near, Who told me to have the test run just to be sure at AutoZone.

My 1 mile drive to AutoZone was the first driving. I had done since the day it died. AutoZone did their thing said it’s all swell, told me not to worry about it.

Engine light was off after I left there and when I called the guy to ask him if He cleared the codes or anything he said no you’re probably good and you can get smog.

Then I drove to Walmart directly from AutoZone. Remember, this is all the only driving I’ve done since the first problem. And I’m being told so far it’s OK

Walmart does the oil change tire change and air filter change. nobody mentions any problems.

I return home and wait until evening to head to the pharmacy.

Summarized:
Problem Emerges.
Got home did not drive anywhere at all again until I drove first to AutoZone and then to Walmart auto on the same day.
Everybody said everything’s cool.
Tried to go to the pharmacy 30 miles away.
Turns out everything’s not cool.

As you can see, the only driving I did after the problem emerged was to go to see people who could potentially help me solve the problem. One tested and reported there were no problems to worry about the second one actually did maintenance and saw no issues.

Then the car died.

11

A failure mode I’ve experienced is you’re driving along with no worries and the serpentine belt breaks. Immediately the engine is still running fine and pushing the car just fine. But the alternator isn’t turning and neither is the water pump nor power steering pump.

About half the idiot lights on the dash light up, the car is suddenly sluggish to steer, and although you don’t have any immediate indication, your engine is about 3 minutes from overheat and about 5 minutes from catastrophic overheat. In all that confusion it’s easy to overlook the thing that is actually most dangerous to your wallet: the soon-to-be-climbing temperature gauge. There might be an overheat light or message too, but in the middle of the Christmas tree you already have you may not notice it coming on a minute or two later. By the time the engine makes an unexpected noise, you’re already at least a minute too late and $thousands poorer.

And as mentioned above, if your car measures coolant temp in the radiator, not in the engine proper, the coolant temp gauge won’t even be climbing; if anything it’ll be stable to gently going down as hot engine water is no longer being pumped to the radiator. Although that sort of cockamamie water temp sensor setup sounds like something from a fine vintage 1950s Chrysler, not from any even remotely modern car.

Bottom line: When you get a light show: pull over immediately, shut down promptly, and stay that way until somebody competent can inspect the whole situation. Which might be the work of 3 weeks to scare up the cash, get it to a real shop, etc.

Three crappy parts / repair outfits each feeling blindly at different legs of your elephant left you thinking you’d had a comprehensive once over. But you’d not. The “check engine” emissions light, if that’s what it was, was a (not) nice head-fake by the car’s computer.

I’m sorry they (Walmart et al) helped you get into this mess. Yet another object lesson that it’s darned expensive being skint in the USA.

12

Did you ever actually take it to a mechanic? I thought AutoZone mostly was a retailer that sells auto-related parts and tools. And i wouldn’t expect Walmart auto (or jiffy lube, it any of the “quick oil change” places) to diagnose problems, either. They do the task you’ve paid them to do.

Or maybe I’m behind the times.

13

Mechanics were the ones who did the oil change and the tires and I went to them immediately after the AutoZone tests.

And I went to AutoZone on the recommendation of a mechanic friend who is not close enough to be of any help directly. He said their tests are just like the ones of them mechanics in terms of the engine testing thing and they’ll do it for free because I got my first quote for a test of any kind was $150 so I went to AutoZone my car wasn’t doing anything at that point except with the red light Sounded fine drove fine. The guy ran more tests than I had asked for and what was cited were minor issues. He said I can get those done for my smog, but they weren’t gonna cause a problem for me driving. And he was unconcerned about the engine light because it wasn’t step because it wasn’t blinking and you know he said it could be there for this, which causes that and the Internet said that you know basically everything that was coming Yeah, that’s not a big deal unless it’s blinking. It didn’t blink until 60 Second before it died.

Then I drove my car which was riding perfectly normally to the Walmart where the guys run the hood and then I drove home where it was riding perfectly normally so you know all this to say I’m not gonna be running around throwing money at people to test things and get into the hood and pay on my car isn’t going bad. It’s driving fine and the test that I’m being told will tell us what’s wrong or telling us there’s nothing wrong. So of course, an abundance of caution is nice to be able to afford, but I don’t intend to tell this whole board exactly what my situation is other than to say yeah I’m not in a position to be doing that.

14

Can you expand on this? Do you mean it never moved up from cold to normal temp?

Under normal circumstances, the temp gauge would start at cold and move to the middle, normal, range as the engine warmed up. Is that what happened? Or did it just stay down in the cold range?

15

Sorry to hear all of this, it does sound real bad, and like you got caught in a failure situation that none of the gauges or people were setup to tell you about.

As said, the coolant temperature gauge measures the coolant temperature. No coolant means the gauge’s readings are meaningless. The computer might have an oil temperature sensor, but perhaps that never got hot enough to cause a code.

With no coolant the car will run fine until it overheats. Short trips will be fine. If it starts to overheat a bit, and then is given time to cool down it will run fine again.

So the check engine light is on for some emissions related reasons. The coolant temperature gauge is inaccurate, and the car hasn’t overheated to the point of causing noticeable damage.

Autozone checks the computer and finds the emissions problems. Walmart changes the oil, but doesn’t check the coolant. They could have at least looked at the overflow reservoir to see if it had the right amount in it. All seems fine until you have a 30 mile drive, and then the engine overheats. The flashing check engine light was probably when the oil temperature exceeded maximum.

There should have been a coolant level light; perhaps that was the flashing check engine light. Maybe it was just lost among the other lights. To me it always looks like a pennant style flag, which doesn’t scream “coolant.”

16

My assumption is that the Wallys did something catastrophically stupid when changing your oil.

This is based on the years of anecdotal evidence from my ex who managed claims for large places like WM. E.g more than half a dozen Porsches taken to Montgomery Wards for oil changes left without drain plugs to predictable results.

And the lesson everyone should take away from this is red light means STOP not drive home not make it down the block. A tow truck charge is a rounding error when it comes to engine work.

17

I missed that.

Anyway, that sounds like a nightmare. I was much luckier when my coolant all leaked out. I picked up my car at the train station and saw a puddle. I drove slowly to daycare to pick up my kids, and then pulled into the mechanic, kids in tow. They asked me to run the AC and i said, “no”. Turned out to be a gasket, the mechanic fixed it for free (i was a regular customer) and that car plugged along until i sold it at 200k.

18

Maybe every car you’ve had, but not every car I’ve had. My current Toyota does not have a temperature gauge, just idiot lights.

I do make checking the reservoir with the coolant in it part of my monthly “check under the hood” drill, but it would be better to have some sort of gauge for the driver.

Yeah, when the engine light starts blinking that’s the time to pull over immediately - which it sounds like you did.

Yeah, I had that happen to my pick-up. At 1 am. It was tempting to try to keep driving but as soon as the dash lighted up like Christmas I hauled it into a turn into a driveway, got it off the road, and shut down. Next thing I know my truck is vomiting coolant, but I missed melting down the engine. Barely. Lot quicker and cheaper fix than I might have had otherwise, but it was probably a near thing.

19

If the engine is very low on coolant, the temperature probe can end up above the coolant level, and read normal temperature, which might be completely incorrect.
But, if your car was leaking (or burning) that much coolant, it should have been pretty obvious by the puddles or smell.

20

My warning bell comes on at the exact same time as the temperature gauge moves from “normal” to “pegged”. The engine warning light comes on a little earlier, while the temperature gauge is still at “normal”. I think both are linked to an oil temperature value.