You would think that all car repairers today would have the same standard of work ethics and companies would actually employ people that know what they are talking about.
One of our customers took their high mileage 2002 Hyundai Elantra into one of those ‘large nationwide full service auto repair shops’ that advertise on TV on a large scale for a simple oil change , the ‘service advisor’ told them that they could not do an oil change because the engine was leaking oil badly. They did however offer to ‘top off’ the oil because it was showing low. The owner took the car home and was very concerned about this because they had not noticed any oil leaks so they called us to carry out an inspection to find the problem.
On first examination we found that the oil level was showing an inch over the maximum mark, the ‘mechanic’ had simply put too much oil in. There was also oil running down the valve cover and cylinder head around the oil filler which appeared to of been caused by spillage when topping off the oil. On closer inspection we could not see any serious oil leaks to prevent an oil change being carried out, there were small oil leaks from the rear crankshaft oil seal area which we had pointed out to the owner over a year ago and intact had not got any worse. The engine due to its high mileage is burning some oil which contributes to the oil loss over time.
We are not sure why they really refused to carry out the oil change and one can only guess that they were looking for ‘other repair work’. It is common knowledge that these type of repair shops do not make any money from simple oil changes , they rely on the ‘up sales’ of other services such as fuel injection treatments, transmission flushes, power steering flushes and those ‘magic additives’ in a bottle treatments.