tird

I was driving home from work and noticed white smoke pouring out from underneath my car. I pulled over to notice oil coming out from underneath my car. I called ara and had to wait 1:45 min for the flatbed to come and pick my car up and take it to the dealership. I feel that my car is an unreliable vehicle now. Who knows what that excessive heat did to my engine. I don't know if they didn't tighten the drain plug good enough or what. What should I do? New engine?

Thanks,
Ed
99.5 1.8TQMS

Roastie

Find out what happened before passing judgement on the car. If you pulled over before any dash warnings went off, there's probably no damage to your car other than a messy undercarriage.

Did you recently have an oil change? (You mentioned the oil plug.) If that was the cause, or if the oil filter leaked, you lost some oil and made a mess, but if the engine didn't lose pressure, you'll be fine. Just make sure the leak is found and fixed. Smoke doesn't necessarily indicate that the car is overheating, just about anything leaking onto a hot exhaust pipe will have a dramatic effect.

See what the dealer has to say about it. Given reasonable care and maintenance, these cars have excellent reliability. Post when you find out what caused the problem, it would be interesting.

Lou33

If you had any engine damage due to low oil pressure, you would have likely heard a clicking, knocking, or grinding noise from your engine before you were able to turn it off. You did good by pulling over and turning your engine off. Many drivers would have just kept driving, smoke or no smoke, until their engine was completely out of oil and toasted.

Hopefully, you had a simple (but major) oil leak that you were able to catch before it damaged your engine. I don't think you have anything to worry about. The Audi techs should do whatever is required, even if it means replacing the engine. If you just had the car serviced in the past few days, I would raise hell with the service manager because somebody may have screwed up.

tird

I was only going 25 mph and I was preoccupied with the smoke.

tird

2nd call to service manager and they didn't bring my car in yet. I guess it's not that important.

Searl

I once had a similar situation that was entirely my fault. Having the benefit of using a friend's lift at his garage I was able to easily change my oil while tending to other bits (you don't get to see the undercarriage that often!). So, I slowly drained the oil from my 300ZXTT while tending to other stuff never bothering to refill it. I started it without any oil, and ran it up to 2K RPM for about a minute before coming to the horrible realization that the car was without oil! Fortunately, I use Mobil-1 Synth, but I would never have done this commerical like skit on purpose! :-) The bottom line is the car ran fine and exhibited no ill effects, ever.

I think your car is fine. Roastie is right, oil on any part of the exhaust makes for a nice show.

Regards,
Searl