I have a 2005 Ford Ranger. Recently I took it in for a its 15K service. They had to replace the oil plug. The service adviser was hard to understand, but as far as I could gather it could've caused problems down the line if it wasn't replaced. I'm curious is this normal for an oil plug to fail so quickly.
On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 00:46:29 -0700, aaronms76 rearranged some electrons to form:
Their grease monkey probably cross-threaded it and screwed it up. They didn't charge you for this, did they?
You need to learn to listen more closely and observe things. Ask more questions at the time rather than post them to strangers who can't see anything. And you should have come away with your old part so you can veryfy things. You didn't do that did you? How do you know they did anything? I hope you also checked your oil before leaving the lot.
I too believe they bungled the situation somewhere. The plug should have been started by hand before a wrench was used. The chances of a bad plug are reeeeemote. On the other hand, someone may have damaged something on a prior service that showed up now as bad threads. If they could clean it up and install a new plug, that would be a good thing.
You just don't know enough about what happened for anybody to advise you.
They charged me $14.xx for a new plug. Since I had problems with this particular service adviser in the past, I really wanted to get out of there.
Like I said, I had issues with this particular service adviser in the past. He was extremely rude to me and very hard to understand. Thus I didn't push the issue. I did look underneath and its not leaking nor it was before. I couldn't see the drain plug anyway, only the filter.
That was what I was concerned about. I had been taking the truck in to another oil changing place every 3,000 miles (The service manual recommends
5,000) I did this because there is only one Ford dealership here,and it is very hard to get a service appointment (like you have schedule three weeks in advance). I figured the other place had damaged it ? But like you said I don't know more about due to extenuating circumstances I really won't know.I know this is stupid question, but I'll ask to ease my mind..taking my truck in every
3,000 miles would've never caused this ?
Unless some dolt cross threaded it, it should last the life of the motor, or more.
What is cross threading mean ? I suspect that the oil change place I had been going to over torqued the oil plug, so that means I'll have to ask them not to over torque it next time ?
Cross-threading is when the bolt gets put into its hole a little crooked. The thread position on one side of the bolt is out of phase with the thread position on the other side of the bolt. It's usually very apparent when you do this- when you turn the bolt it binds in one position every time you go around. Cross-threading a bolt wrecks the threads on whatever is the softer of the two- in this case I would expect that they wrecked the threads in the oil pan, and put in a larger, self-tapping bolt to 'solve' it.
-phaeton
At this point, there is one thing I would certainly do. Go buy you an oil pan, get a 14 or 15 mm wrench, and get under there and pull the damn thing yourself so you can see if anything is diddled up.
The poster is not up to changing a pan. That's for sure. I would not change it anyway, but I would find out for myself what is going on there. Again, the poster is not up to that either. I would simply leave him with the advice to keep checking for leaks after each oil change and deal with leaks that occur. And he should be advised that there are at least a half dozen fixes for a leaky plug that do not involve the expense of pan replacement.
Cross threading is the act of putting the bolt into the threaded hole at an angle. The threads of the bolt and the hole do not align, they become crossed. Hence, the term cross threading.
They could have tightened the bolt too tightly, and stripped the hole too. That is a distinct possibility.
One of the available corrective actions is to get a new drain plug that is designed specifically for this problem. The new plug has the ability to cut new threads in the pan so the bolt can be properly tightened.
The drain plug _should_ have an aluminum or brass washer that is mean to be replaced with every oil change. The washer is made of a soft material that gets smashed into the irregularities around the drain plug hole, and this prevents leaks from the drain plug.
Well its not leaking oil at this point. I guess my options at this point is to inform the independent oil changing place to not over torque the oil plug. Or better yet, I take my truck over the dealership to get the oil changed. As I suspect the oil changing place did the damage ( I had taken it over there 4 times previously for oil changes).
should have been warranty. They didn't even need to call you.
sIf you are the sort that pays for oil change service, I suspect the dealership is the better option anyway. In my limited experience, the dealership will wash your car -- they washed mine -- when you get an oil change there. They take too long for my taste, but if a free car wash comes out of the deal, then I suggest you keep going back there.
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