tl;dr version: Got an oil change at Walmart. 2 weeks later, drain plug falls out while driving. Walmart unwilling to pay for anything unless there is obvious damage to the motor. Takeaway: Always use a trustworthy auto shop, even for simple routine maintenance!

I took my vehicle to the the local Walmart for a routine oil change and tire rotation a few months ago.

Eighteen days later, I was driving to a friend’s house from my office. As I approached my destination and slowed down, I noticed white smoke rising from the hood of G coupe. Within a matter of seconds, the smoke increased dramatically to the point of it billowing and being vented through my car's ventilation system into the vehicle cabin. The smoke smelled very strongly of burnt oil and I immediately parked the car, shut off the engine, and got out of the vehicle, coughing and choking from the copious amount of smoke.

Once outside the car, I noticed that oil was dripping from beneath my car and forming a pool on the pavement. I would estimate that this dripping continued for roughly 10-20 minutes before it eventually slowed and stopped (see pics).

I had the vehicle towed back to Walmart the following morning. Prior to towing the car, the tow truck driver inspected the undercarriage and indicated that the drain plug was missing from the engine. The employee at the store who inspected the vehicle also acknowledged that the drain plug was no longer installed but rather rolling around loosely in the underbody shield/cover.

I filed an incident report at the store and spoke to a supervisor who seemed guarded but apologetic. They filled the engine back up and fired the car up. Seemed to drive fine. Refunded the service costs and offered a free subsequent oil change (yeah right!) I had to get to work, so I took off, knowing I will follow up on the issue later.

After the incident, I saw that my car had left a noticeable trail of oil on the pavement along the path I had driven. I traced and followed the oil trail for roughly 3 miles, until it was no longer possible because the trail entered a freeway. It is therefore obvious that I was driving with a missing or loose drain bolt for at least 3 miles, but possibly much more. Motor oil was leaking out from the running engine this entire time (i.e., on the highway).

Anyway, I complained to Walmart, who forwarded my claim over to their claims handler, a company in AR. They indicated that unless any tests show that there is definitive damage or excessive premature wear to the engine, they will not be paying for any damages. Speaking to som third party shops, it seems compression and leak engine tests aren't really designed to capture the type of damage that might result from oil starvation.

Now before I get some much deserved flak for taking the car to Walmart... it was the only thing that was open when I had time to take the car in for service. Yeah, big mistake on my part. I'll chalk it up to an expensive lesson learned!

 

You should've asked them to drain your oil and measure how much came out to get an idea of how low you were running for a piece of mind. The Walmart guy will tell you it only lost an insignificant amount and won't be a problem but you're practically driving a ticking bomb now. Not trying to scare you, but the VVEL needs the oil just as much as your bearings in the VQ37. Best of luck.

Must be said though, why the f*** would you get your oil replaced at Walmart haha! I live in Dubai and even I know it's a no no

 

This ^^^
Call me paranoid but I'm the only one that changes fluids on my car (except the AT fluid since extra tooling is preferred). I don't even let tire shops mess w/ my car, I take the tires to them and mount/dismount them myself.

Hope it all works out OP, defintely keep a very close watch on things and at the very least be sure to get a Blackstone oil analysis when the time comes, and for the next few oil changes.

 

Yeah, I'm like about going to Walmart.

Actually, I did ask that. It was pretty much bone dry according to the tech. But some of it did drain out after the car was stopped already. I guess the best guess would be to estimate how much oil was in that puddle, which would be the amount that was left in the engine before it was shut off.

 

Buy some car ramps with that refund money and do it yourself

 

+1 on the ramps. Just don't buy them from Wal-Mart. LOL

 

lol I didn't even read past this.......

 

Have you gotten an oil analysis before? It would be interesting to do a pre/post test to examine for any damage.

Another great reason to get the oil analysis done every oil change.

 

I think an option to consider is to pay Infiniti to inspect the engine first then take the findings to Walmart. I really don't think driving with such low oil level will NOT harm the engine. My uneducated guess is 5-7hours? of labor. If the internals are damaged, you'll probably get a new engine on their dime rather than on you. It's something to consider if I were you.

 

The good news is that your car is fine. You'd have to run it with no oil at all for some time to do any real damage. The puddle there shows that there was still quite a bit of oil in your engine even after you stopped.

The best you can likely hope for is that they document it well and you'll have something in writing in the event you have any issue later. I really don't think you will.

 

I've had a couple done on my 07 G35 and a couple on my current 09. I'm due to have another one, I'm not on a strict time frame although that's probably a good idea. It's been about 20k miles since the last one.

OP, hopefully you were just mildly cruising your G during this episode, that would be another thing in your favor and like BB mentioned, there was a fair amount of oil puddling under your G so it wasn't bone dry. If your motor wasn't running hard & hot then your much more likely to be in the clear.
Good Luck!

 

This is the first reported incident of any infiniti getting an oil change at walmart that i've ever heard of. I hope everything works out for you and I can't say for sure what happened to your engine but it's probably somewhere in between impending doom or it's fine. Update us if you decide to do the oil analysis.

If you buy your own oil nissan will change it for $15

I'm not familiar with the walmart automotive service hours but aren't they just typical daytime business hours?

 

Having Walmart do oil change for your G is kinda like doing this:



It will do more harm than good for your car.

 

Just because your car is ready for an oil change but you don't either have the extra time, don't do it yourself, can't get to a dealer or a decent shop and so on, doesn't mean you have to get it done "NOW" by some "Fly-By-Night" outfit just to make sure it's done at a certain mileage. Keep driving the car and when you can schedule an oil change by someone who knows what they are doing and you trust, then get it done. A few hundred to even a thousand miles on today's modern oil will not aggravate the engine wear at all. Hopefully you had a "FULL" synthetic oil in the car which will provide a greater degree of engine protection than any syn/blend product. Since you still had some cooling going on from the cooling system, that may have helped. However all that white smoke means something got hot enough to burn that oil and that has to be looked into. Pull the plastic splash guard and see if maybe the oil that was leaking out started hitting your exhaust system which then burned and created the white smoke. If that didn't cause it, then find out now before you start hearing some bad knocking noise in the future from a bad bearing or lifter which finally fails. Sorry to hear about this but . . . . ., . !

Al

 

I'm sorry- I was asking the OP if he had gotten an analysis done. That could aid him in documenting issues.