Oil crisis

Did I ever mention that I lost my first car due to an absence of oil?

Funny story. I bought my first car, a used gray 1990 Toyota Tercel, back in 1992 so I would have a way of getting to and from work. (33.3 miles is a long way to walk twice each day.) It came with someting like 20,000 miles on it and a short list of easily-fixable problems that I identified within the warranty period.

I quickly began to heap the miles on it. But I got regular maintenance and had regular oil changes at a national chain place, which I never had a problem with despite hearing all sorts of horror stories.

But all good things must come to an end. In early 1996 my little Tercel developed a few problems I wanted to get taken care of. The third brake light, mounted in the rear windshield, had burned out. The rear-view mirror had become loose and was prone to flopping down off of its mounting. The brake pads were worn and needed replacing. Oh, and I was due for an oil change. May as well get that done, too.

I should have suspected trouble in the days following the repair. I noticed almost immediately that the third brake light was still not working. A while later I hit some rumble strips and my rear-view mirror flopped down again. I took my car back to them, indignantly, and demanded that they fix the things they had charged me to fix before. They made the repairs and apologized profusely.

As I drove off I thought What next? Will the brakes fail?

It wasn't the brakes I should have been worried about.

It was a cold day in the week leading up to Easter as I drove in to work. My car is so quiet, I thought happily as I made my commute. Too quiet. I have nearly run over several people who have stepped in front of my car in city traffic because they did not hear it. In the future, when all cars are electric, how many people will be run over because they didn't hear the car coming?

Right on cue, the noise started.

My family owned Volkswagen Beetles when I was a kid. Not the prettied-up approximations that showed up a decade or so ago, with their safety-glass windshieds and seatbelts and front-mounted engines. No, these were rough and ready little German numbers with rear-mounted engines that sounded like lawnmower engines. They made a very distinct clattering roar as they drove along.

My Tercel was suddenly starting to sound like that.

Must be a hole in the muffler, I thought, or maybe the exhaust system's come loose. This annoyed me a bit, since I had just paid a pretty penny to have the exhaust system replaced the previous December after it had fallen apart. The noise got louder as I got to work. I decided I would call the Toyota dealer a few miles from there - not the place I had had the work done, which was closer to my house - and have them look at it.

They were very worried when I described the symptoms. Very worried. "Drive in slow," they said. "And keep the RPMs down." Well, without a tachometer - Tercels are not so equipped - how the hell was I to know my RPMs?

There are two ways to get from where I work to the Toyota place. One involves the highway. The other involves a very steep hill. Under the circumstances, I decided that the highway was the safer bet.

I almost made it. I was about two miles from the Toyota place when the noise, which was now a deafening roar, reached a crescendo. And then several things happened at once.

I heard a noise like a drive shaft snapping, and then a noise like a bunch of pebbles being thrown against the inside of my engine compartment. (Tie rods, I would later learn.) I lost all power and was suddenly coasting on a busy highway with no shoulders.

Oh, and the Oil light came on.

Thanks. A little late for that.

The bottom line: my engine was all out of oil. The noise I had heard was what you hear when theres nothing left to lubricate the pistons and whatnot. The cracking was what happens when you push the drive shaft a little too far. The pebble-ish noise was what it sounds like when your engine tears itself apart from the inside. While the people at the other Toyota dealer were busy not fixing my brake light and not repairing my rear-view mirror, they were also apparently not changing my oil. Or, at least, not putting enough oil in the engine after they drained it.

Lesson learned: always check your oil level. At every fill-up and after every oil change, at least.

But lessons are sometimes forgotten.

Fast-forward twelve years, to a car - a blue 1996 Toyota Tercel - that has been frozen at just over 282,000 miles for nearly a month because of a broken speedometer. The Check Engine light has been glowing orangely for most of that time, presumably as a result of the speedometer issue.

I had an appointment to get my speedometer fixed yesterday. They were also supposed to reset the Check Engine light so we could see if it came on again, but apparently they forgot. The light was still glowing this morning when I started my commute to work. It went out after a few miles.

The Check Engine light had still been glowing on Saturday when I drove in to work. As I pulled up to the last STOP sign before our parking lot I noticed a momentary red flash on my dashboard. After I parked I looked at the darkened dash and tried to figure out which light it had been. Seatbelt?, I wondered. Maybe I tugged on the sensor as I came to a stop at the intersection?

Today the light lit up again momentarily as I was maneuvering into a parking space. The Oil light.

Oh, crap.

Nothing is worse than an Oil light. Nothing. If it comes on, you pull over to the side of the road and stop immediately. You do not keep going to wherever you're going. You do not drive to the nearest convenience store, or even to a better part of town. You stop, immediately. Failure to do so is to risk engine loss and, depending on when and where it happens, death.

But my Oil light had just winked at me. Twice. I went in to work to my new office, wrote the words "CHECK OIL!" on a piece of paper, and stuck it on top of my coat.

At the end of the day I checked my oil. I didn't see any. The dipstick was coming up nearly dry.

I need oil NOW.

I rolled downhill to a convenience store located near the building where my old department used to be housed. I popped my hood, checked my oil again, read my Owner's Manual, and went in to buy the recommended oil. 10W30. Well, they only had 10W40, and I figured better something than nothing. Carfully reaching past the containers of transmission fluid and lighter fluid, I bought two quarts - one for using, and one for a spare.

The engine drank down both quarts. I bought two more for luck. While I was filling the engine, two teenage girls who had parked their car next to mine, apparently to conduct some sort of business transaction with someone in a nearby pickup truck who, while parked, kept his engine running, asked if I needed help. With a container of oil in my left hand, an oily rag in my right, and a flashlight in my mouth, I could only laugh, and then drool slightly around the flashlight. I took the flashlight out of my mouth and explained that the only problem at this point was that I was potentially using the wrong grade of oil. They then warned me that it was possible to add too much oil to an engine, but I already knew this - didn't they see the Owner's Manual flipped open to that page and sitting on top of the acid-encrusted battery terminals? One of the girls then confided that she had recently wrecked her engine doing just that. I thanked the girls profusely for their assistance and advice, but my task was done, and the proof would come in the driving.

I didn't blow my engine on the way home. But I'll get an honest-to-goodness oil change at the first opportunity - which may be Monday afternoon. If the car lasts that long.

So, um, let that be a lesson to you. Check your oil level. You don't want to blow your engine because you ran out of oil!

I think I'll start checking again. After every fill-up, and after every oil change, at least.