This is exactly what happened to my brother-in-law (with a late '90s Subaru Forester, ironically enough), when he had the oil changed at a Jiffy Lube.
The tech at Jiffy Lube erroneously drained the transmission fluid instead of the motor oil. He put the plug back in, they put oil in the engine, and sent my BIL on his way. A couple of miles later, as he was driving home, the car made a horrendous noise, as the transmission seized up and shredded itself.
A lawsuit ensued, and the owner of the Jiffy Lube franchise eventually footed the bill for the repairs to the Forester.
This is just about exactly how atherosclerotic plaques in your blood vessels cause strokes and thormboses and such. And is also why efforts to make a drug that would dissolve existing plaques is such a fraught idea.
Okay so I think I’m feeling better about this now.
She took it to a place where she was in the vehicle the entire time, so it was never driven without fluid in it. The guy drained the oil (actually transmission fluid) and talked about how clean it looked. He also claims to have changed the filter (side question - can you change the oil filter without all of the engine oil being drained out? In my ignorance I thought the oil had to be drained first). He had her start the car, stuck his head under the hood and about 30 seconds later told her to turn it off and then determined the transmission had been drained.
Her receipt doesn’t show anything other than the oil change. She called and the guy knew who she was and said they would have used Valvoline CVT fluid. She then called the dealership and told them what happened, and he said they used the right fluid and she should be good to go.
The vehicle only has about 55k miles on it. Is there any reason to think there could have been build up that could now cause issues?
Sorry for all the questions - I only know enough about cars to be able to ask ignorant ones
Probably not. And it is a flush where they use pressure to get rid of all of the debris that can cause issues. Drain and fills are usually pretty safe.
As you say …Procedure generally is to drain as much of the oil as possible via the drain, then remove the filter which will spill very little since the engine is mostly empty already, then put a new filter on, then put the drain plug back in, and finally refill with fresh oil.
Back in the day, filters were generally installed pretty low in the oil system so removing the filter first would promptly drain most of the oil whether the mechanic wanted that or not. If this was done on purpose, they could get the new filter ready and swap them quickly but messily losing only a pint-ish of dirty oil.
On late model cars filters could be darn near anywhere physically within the oil system. Including up at/near the highest point, where changing the filter without draining first might be both easy & not messy. But still not the desired order of operations.
