mailrail

I had my CERTIFIED 2000 RX 300 for about 5 weeks now and I was washing it tonight and decided to check the oil and to my horror I discovered that the dipstick was showing maybe a 1/4 inch of oil from the bottom of the dipstick! Holy Crap! I checked my oil about a week after I bought it and it was showing about a quart low, so I topped it off thinking that some dumbass mechanic had failed to fill it all the way up when they were changing it for the certification at the dealer. My wife drove it to North Carolina and back last week (roundtrip = 1100 miles) and we put a total of about 3K or so total since buying it. There's absolutely no oil on the driveway or the floor of the garage and it doesn't smoke when started. Where's the oil going? One other thing I noticed today when driving it (before checking the oil, obviously) was that it was "pinging" real bad under acceleration. Is my oil jelled? What's going on?

HarrierAWD

Could be oil gelling. In any case, the engine seems to have a serious oil consumption issue. (You don't always see blue smoke when the engine burns oil.) Definitely take it back to the dealer and complain.

My guess is that there's some sludge in the engine, which caused the piston rings to get stuck so they don't "wipe down" the oil as well. So oil got into the combustion chambers and burned. That'd give you tons of carbon deposit and cause the bad pinging.

mailrail

Took it to the dealer today and, sho' nuff...OIL SLUDGE!!! Luckily, it's a CPO vehicle and everything is covered. They told me that they don't know the extent of it yet (???) but it could be anywhere from 3 days to 2 weeks before I get it back. They gave me an almost new Toyota Avalon to drive until it's fixed. Nice car and I probably should've pitched a b*tch until they gave me a Lexus product, but this is a decent car and drives nice.

Question...what should I expect them to do in this situation? The service advisor said something about replacing the head or replacing the engine, depending on the damage inside. Would it be a completely NEW engine or a rebuild?

HarrierAWD

My guess is getting good nowadays.

They will have to take the engine apart and look. If the cylinder walls got scratched, they'll have to give you a re-build engine, not a new one though. Otherwise, they'll either 1) replace the piston heads like they said, or 2) clean off the deposit with solvent, then just replace the piston rings.

It's good to hear that this dealer seems to be willing to fix it, not giving you runarounds.