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Car took a hit to the oil system & collision insurance woes

1K views 3 replies 2 participants last post by  JaxPlanet 
#1 · (Edited)
First off, the car's a 2011 Golf (CBUA) with a manual and about 102k miles on it. Never thrown any sort of engine related warning in the 35k miles I've been driving it.

Otherwise, to the incident itself. I was driving at night on one of the country freeways out here in the sticks (55 and mostly surrounded by forest), and only caught a glimpse of one of the biggest raccoons I've ever seen before I absolutely nailed it dead-on. Few seconds later, I've got a Christmas tree on my dashboard, so I pull over as soon as I can, park it, and shut it off. Coolant's absolutely pouring out of my radiator, and going around to the back I notice my hatch is completely coated in a sheen of oil. Not good. No tows at night out here, so I turn the hazards on, arrange a ride, and lock 'er up.

Talk to my insurance and get the car towed in the morning, and when the insurance recommended Lifetime Repairs Guarantee™ collision shop finally takes a look at it they find enough damage where it's a 50/50 on whether it should be totaled, but they arrange with the insurance to work on it. Greatest hits: Bumper, crushed radiator and mount, crushed condenser, and a cracked oil filter assembly. Notable hits: The wiring to my oil pressure switch. They drag their heels on it, but I finally get my car back 39 days and $600+ in out of pocket rentals later.

While they've noticeably skimped on actually getting the right bolts or even all the bolts in to properly put my undertray back together, the car seems to be running right when I pick it up. And, all's good until I leave the freeway at the end of the 35 mile drive back home. Once I start cruising around 50 mph/1500 rpm for the short final leg, I start getting intermittent oil pressure warnings. And well, I've got moths coming out of my wallet, it looks fine, performs fine, sounds fine, and it's already been driven this far, so I just drive it the couple miles the rest of the way home.

Shop's closed at this point, but I'm curious, so I take it around the block after it has a chance to cool off. No oil pressure warnings, but it does throw a new CEL.

Call the shop in the morning, they recommend driving it in to take a look. :screwy: Instead, I get them to send a mechanic out to take a look at it and I assume run an oil pressure test. He arrives with just a code reader, checks the oil level, sits in the car reading the codes and scratching his head for a while, and then idles the engine until it warms up. He can't reproduce the oil pressure warning, but he does tell me what the new CELs are. Namely, both the camshaft position sensors are throwing a warning. Says as far as he can tell the car's fine oil wise, and it sounds good, and the only thing that's gonna cause an oil pressure warning is low oil. He says it should be fine to drive, but if the problems continue I might want to drive it back to the shop. I think he's a dumbass, but I nod along.

So, drive the car a bit more, and of course, the oil pressure warning hasn't gone away. Turns out the oil needs to be hot and the engine needs to be running around a steady 1500 rpm in order to throw it. Because well, after reading up on it, those are about the only conditions that the ECU actually gives a damn what the oil pressure switch is saying.

Talk to the shop again, they recommend driving it in again... Absolutely not. Have them tow it back out to the shop to hopefully actually run an oil pressure test. They don't. They just tear down their repairs and reassemble, and say everything looks good on their end. So, they recommend sending it to the nearest dealer, as they're not an engine shop, and they apparently just don't do things like routine post-oil-system-repair oil pressure tests.

It gets towed to the dealer, they still don't run an oil pressure test for some reason, but they do notice the pan's dented badly enough to cause the seal to leak and in a way where it could possibly cause pickup issues. They get authorization to replace it from my insurance, and they're on their way. However, when they do drop the pan they find some dreaded shavings in it. Not sure how bad, but obviously any amount's pretty damned terrible. So, they poke around the rest of the engine, and find my vacuum pump seal's been leaking oil for a while, and that's obviously totally unrelated to the collision. So, they decide that's the cause of the shavings, and go to the insurance with this wanting to replace the engine. But, not collision related? Not covered.

And well, I think their conclusion on what caused the shavings is a load of bull, but I'm no expert. So, any thoughts on their conclusions, and any thoughts about fighting this?

Note: I haven’t gotten the car back yet, so I haven’t been able to confirm that the pan was causing the warnings. Also, both shops were treating me with suspicion regarding it even throwing an oil pressure warning, even though I gave them both explicit, surefire instructions on how to reproduce it, which I'm guessing they didn't follow. So, that might've fed into the dealership's conclusion, which is absolutely nuts considering my instructions were basically step 1 in the shop manual for testing the oil pressure switch and diagnosing oil pressure issues on the CBUA.
 
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#2 ·
#3 ·
Well, finally managed to talk to the folks that actually made the diagnosis. Their thinking is that as far as they could tell the pan wasn’t blocking the pickup tube, the pickup tube was unobstructed, and they weren’t able to reproduce the oil pressure warnings. So, it must’ve been silently caused by running low on oil due to the vacuum pump seal oil leak. But I don’t think they did any actual testing on the oil pressure, or even follow my simple instructions on how to reproduce the warning.

I should have the car back in my possession in a day or two with the new pan though, so we’ll see if that stops the oil pressure warnings. But, without evidence of it and without either shop backing me up on there even being oil pressure warnings in the first place, I think I’ll still be pretty screwed.
 
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