Advice, please - oil filler cap left off at last service

Too bad you didn't check the oil level yourself before you gave it back to the shop.

IF the car only lost 1 qt in the course of the week, I suggest that your car is probably fine internally. The mess that was caused certainly could/would cause the misfires. I would insist on a complete cleaning (if not already done) and new spark plugs (make sure they give you Densos). Personally, while this incident was very messy and amateurish, I don't think you have to worry about long-term engine damage.

 

It won't help you much but all I can mostly do is commiserate with your situation.

Quite frankly, from what you've experienced and written about your dealership, I don't trust their service department.
Mistakes can happen, but leaving the oil fill cap off? Is a pretty basic one. Allowing for that? You'd think that when the vehicle is being brought in to address a pretty serious and obvious mistake the dealership made, that when they were trying to apply a remedy...clean the engine bay, they would be alert and careful to NOT allow water into the spark plug wells. That's compounding Dumb..with Dumber...

But I can't tell you how much potential damage may or may not of happened to your engine.

At this point? I don't know if you shouldn't be opening a case with Toyota Care and documenting everything that has happened. At some point, looking for a new dealership to evaluate the problem might be helpful.

Hopefully other posters might be able to add more specific opinion about potential damage.

Once you discovered the filler cap off, did you try check the oil? The other aspect is you're trusting this service department when they say you lost "about a quart of oil". I would think, losing about a quart of oil in 6 days, wouldn't create any permanent damage, but then again? We are trusting the D and D'er service department to be telling you the truth about how much oil was left in your vehicle. At this point I wouldn't trust them.

Good Luck, sorry just a crappy scenario.

 

Sorry, I can't answer all of your questions. But I never trust the dealer to put the proper amount of oil in the car, and check the level ASAP after a dealer performed oil change. More often than not, I've found it overfilled with oil and had to drain the excess out to get it to the proper level.

Hopefully your car isn't FUBAR. Best wishes to you.

 

wow, talk about a snafu. would you mind sharing the dealership with us, so others can avoid them? sadly, there isn't much to go on other than your sense of what is wrong.
i suggest you ask them to pay for an independent opinion from a hybrid repair shop, there's a good one in crisco, luscious garage. it sounds like you need more help than they can provide.
for all you know, there might not have been any oil left in the car, although it probably would have thrown a warning. hopefully, the rough running is their lack of correct cleaning of the engine bay and spark plug fix. all the best.

 

Are you REALLY saying that after noticing the cap off and oil all over.......that YOU did not check the oil level ???

Keep after them but there likely will come a point where the only remaining problem is in your imagination.
Some small engines run with virtually NO oil for a short time with no apparent permanent damage.

P.S. I have made that embarassing mistake twice when adding oil to an older car. Once when my wife was leaving for a long trip. OUCH !!!

 

Unfortunately.....bisco's use of the term SNAFU is all too appropriate to describe Dealer service these days.

OK.....first thing's first. No permanent harm done.
You're rolling an 07, and you probably have punched through the 100,000 mile mark.
I would definitely make the dealer make this right, and to their credit they immediately assumed responsibility for the oil filler cap being left off. This is a non-trivial act, since one would presume that an owner should have been aroused by smoke, burning oil odor or oil spots in the driveway, to say nothing of not double checking that the dealer put the right amount of oil in the car. Some dealerships would have disputed the claim that they were the ones who left the cap off for most of a week.

I would continue to seek their assistance in cleaning up this mess - pun almost unintended, and I presume that as long as Billy the Oil-Change-Dude doesn't get turned loose inside your engine compartment with a high pressure hose (again!) all of this will probably sort itself out. He or she probably injected dirty soapy water into a weather resistant, (not pressure washer resistant) connector or sensor.
It was probably a "he".
At the risk of sounding sexist, ladies usually have more common sense with high pressure liquids.
They'll find it and fix it if you keep the pressure on (pun almost unintended)...up to a point that you probably haven't reached yet.

After that, whenever you return to their service bay, they'll park your car somewhere and pretend to be working on it until the "Change Owner" light comes on or the problem is diminished or disappears.

It may have already.
Have you ever broken a limb or severely strained a joint?
Remember how hyper-aware you were after the injury?

If this dealership balks at getting your car back to where YOU want it to be, then you can explore some of the additional protections that your CARB warranty provides you, and failing all else California is a pretty easy state in which to take somebody to Small Claims Court.

A friendly but firm letter to or conversation with the dealership's owner might also yield additional benefit.

 

Lesson Learned:
ALWAYS double-check the service department's handiwork to the best of your ability before leaving the dealership.

 

You're not the only one.

 

This sounds to me like ongoing problems from the wash.
I'd ask the dealership to change the plugs and engine air filter, exchange the oil, and clean the MAF.

 

45 years, ago, I had to play for this kind of poor service. Every time I got the car back, I had to check it over for loose parts.

If I have to do the job anyway, I figured that it was better that I did it right the first time.

35 years, ago, I lived in an apartment, and wanted the timing chain in my Chevy Camaro changed. I took it to the dealer in San Diego to have it done. Two oil pans later after my original one, and the front seal still leaked.

I should have done it myself the first time.

 

If there was absolutely NO oil on the dipstick then I would say it was down by more than 1 quart - which means they are lying to you. And which also means it is more likely there could be engine damage than if it was simply 1 quart low. But the big thing is that they are lying.

Personally, they would have lost my trust and I'd find another shop or start doing it myself.

 

I'm not surprised that you could not see brand new oil on the dipstick -- it is very clear.

I am surprised that you did not notice the missing oil filler cap when you were checking the dipstick.

 

the best one i had in the past was when they left the air filter and cover out, and the cover wing nut laying in the bottom, just waiting to go down the carburetor.

 

Wing nut. That was the guy who left the oil filler cap off.

 

True enough - but everybody makes mistakes.
To the dealer's credit - they took responsibility, offered an apology AND a loaner, and they're trying to make it right.
I'd be tempted to let them fix things.

As far as the oil volume, the Prius has a very small sump.....less than 4qts IIRC.
Also.....IIRC when the volume level goes low enough to illuminate the moron light you still have enough oil in the sump to lubricate the motor, albeit with about a 30-percent loss of volume.
I've heard a zillion times that by the time you see the idiot light then the damage is already done, but that's not necessarily true in this case.
Most of the time, when people see the flickering oil light of impending doom on their dashboards, this means that the oil volume has been much too low for perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles before the neglectful owner was aroused by the light on the dash.
If you have a Prius that's using a quart and a half of oil every 10,000 miles, then your oil change periodicity may lead you to drive your car over a quart low for tens of thousands of miles before your burn rate illuminates the CEL before the oil is replenished.
In a low revving, push-rod V8 with a 6 quart sump, this isn't a good thing.
An itty-bitty 4 banger with an already small oil sump suffers even more damage from this type of long term neglect!!!
It's sooooo easy to spend $30 on an electric blood pressure cuff and measure your BP once a month or so and yet millions of Americans still have undetected hypertension!
Same silly thing, only with a car you don't even need to pony up the $30.

Since the OP hasn't mentioned seeing a dashboard light, then I presume that we're dealing with a single short-term oil volume loss, and since the Prius motor has a pretty low RPM band, I also predict that no damage was done other than hyrdo-blasting the engine compartment afterwards.
More than likely, the car will be fine.....maybe even more so now that the owner has had a painful lesson in why lifting the hood every other fill-up or so is so important!

Heck.....I'd buy a car from that dealership.
(I'd also check on any repair/maintenance work that they did though! )

 

I left the oil cap off an Accord one time. It was off for a week or two; at most a cup of oil splashed up and out. Stupid mistake: now if I've got the cap removed I put it somewhere where it'll prevent the hood from latching.

 

I do the same thing.....and YES....for the same reason.
I discovered my error later that afternoon when I smelled the oil in the engine compartment.
Nice thing about being an old fart like me is that you've made enough mistakes in your life to have learned some valuable lessons along the way. I still do all of my own oil changes.........and I still put the cap near or on the hood latch 30 years later.

 

People tell me that you learn from your mistakes, I would rather learn from the mistakes of others. More mistakes to learn from and a lot less pain.

JeffD