Lost the oil and engine survived

[Longdan]

Just thought I'd share this story with you all.

I own a 2001 Toyota Allex (same as a RunX) with a 2ZZ-GE and tiptronic box.

A few weeks ago I was heading back home after being out of town. It was holiday season and lots of cars on the road. I noticed what I thought was dust in my rear view mirror but at that time didn't think anything of it because I had just been through some dusty roadworks and all the cars were trailing dust. But after about a minute, I thought "why am i the only one still trailing dust?"

I thought "this is not right" but I was on a windy road with nowhere to pull over and in a long line of traffic. By this time I could smell burning oil and knew something wasn't right, and as luck would have it, a sign said rest area '1km' so I carried on, at 100 kph with my oil ****** out the bottom of the car. I pulled into the rest area and shut down the engine. The oil pressure light had not come on, but the engine was making a bad clicking noise. I had a look under the car and it was soaked with oil, and there was a trickle of oil coming off the sump. I felt around behind the sump where the plug is, and found that there was no plug. I had lost it along with most of the oil. This was bad news. But as I said - the oil pressure light hadn't come on.

I was out in the middle of nowhere with 1 bar of reception on my phone. And it was a sunday afternoon. I rang a mate and got him to look up some towing companies and eventually got one that would take me to the nearest town (I was about 300kms from home). The guy turned up with a transporter and loaded my car onto the back. Off we went. He said he had a mate that might be able to help me out. We went to his mates place ($180 fopr the towie) and he dropped me and my car off there. As luck would have it, his mechanic mate had a sump plug that fitted and some oil. That cost me another $80. At this stage, I wasn't sure whether my engine was stuffed or not, but I was miles from home and it was the best I was going to get. So we put the new plug in and filled up the oil and off I went. The car drove just fine.

The next day I drove it to work and got the mechanics next door to have a look at it. They checked the compression, did an oil analysis, and plugged it into the diagnostic machine. Everything checked out just fine. I gave it another oil and filter change, just in case ther was some metallic particles floating round in there. It drives just fine and still revs to 8k with no problems.

I've heard people say that the 2ZZ engines can easily seize if starved of oil, but that wasn't my experience.

When I told the mechanics what happened, they asked me what kind of oil I was running, and I told them magnatech. They reckoned that this is what saved the engine.

[123R-Prozak]

go buy a lotto ticket

[danja]

go buy a lotto ticket

...or just torque your sump plug properly next time :P

[Hiro]

go buy a lotto ticket

...or just torque your sump plug properly next time :P

If you "torque" a sump plug you'll potentially strip the thread - it only needs to be slightly more than hand tight, the washer should deal with the rest

[pirate125]

If you "torque" a sump plug you'll potentially strip the thread - it only needs to be slightly more than hand tight, the washer should deal with the rest

I torque mine to 27 ft-lb all the time and I never had a problem.

[danja]

If you "torque" a sump plug you'll potentially strip the thread - it only needs to be slightly more than hand tight, the washer should deal with the rest

Torquing doesn't mean over-tightening, it means tightening to specification. If you look at pretty much any factory workshop manual, it'll have a torque spec for just about everything - from something like 120Nm for wheel nuts, to 5Nm for the screws that hold the dash together.

Sump plugs are usually around 25Nm, and its a much better idea to use a torque wrench to get it right than to guess by hand, because what "hand tight" means to you, might be completely different to what it means to me - even the same person can change depending on how tired they are etc. Have you ever gone to undo a tap you did up the day before and said to yourself "Damn, I turned that tap off tight!"?

And yes, having a suitable washer is also important.

[Hiro]

If you "torque" a sump plug you'll potentially strip the thread - it only needs to be slightly more than hand tight, the washer should deal with the rest

Torquing doesn't mean over-tightening, it means tightening to specification. If you look at pretty much any factory workshop manual, it'll have a torque spec for just about everything - from something like 120Nm for wheel nuts, to 5Nm for the screws that hold the dash together.

Sump plugs are usually around 25Nm, and its a much better idea to use a torque wrench to get it right than to guess by hand, because what "hand tight" means to you, might be completely different to what it means to me - even the same person can change depending on how tired they are etc. Have you ever gone to undo a tap you did up the day before and said to yourself "Damn, I turned that tap off tight!"?

And yes, having a suitable washer is also important.

Trust me, I know the meaning of torque, and have done up and loosend enough bolts in my cars to know the effects. Yes, the workshop manuals will give torque-values for even the smallest bolts and nuts, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you _need_ to use a torque wrench - most bolted connections in a car are not torque critical, and as long as they are "tight" then they are fine. However, some bolts can be damaged very easily by over-torqueing, and when you mention the word torqueing to an inexperienced person they often assume that it means a big fat torque wrench and lots of arm strength. Spark plugs are an excellent example of this, as are sump-plugs - there is a torque specified in the workshop manual, but they are are job that most people will attempt without a manual, and both will very easily strip threads (often with devastating consequences) if you tighten them much more than just nipping them up with a socket or spanner.

[eviltwin]

torque the sump plug? NO

[danja]

Trust me, I know the meaning of torque, and have done up and loosend enough bolts in my cars to know the effects. Yes, the workshop manuals will give torque-values for even the smallest bolts and nuts, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you _need_ to use a torque wrench - most bolted connections in a car are not torque critical, and as long as they are "tight" then they are fine. However, some bolts can be damaged very easily by over-torqueing, and when you mention the word torqueing to an inexperienced person they often assume that it means a big fat torque wrench and lots of arm strength. Spark plugs are an excellent example of this, as are sump-plugs - there is a torque specified in the workshop manual, but they are are job that most people will attempt without a manual, and both will very easily strip threads (often with devastating consequences) if you tighten them much more than just nipping them up with a socket or spanner.

I'd argue that anyone who hears the word "torque" and then thinks they need a breaker bar to do up a sump plug, should probably just leave it to the professionals

True, you don't always need a torque wrench to get the desired result, but it never hurts either provided you know the right torque spec.