2000 ES300 w/ 75K miles

This is my mothers vehicle. Let me preface this by saying that my parents take very good care of this car. My father has kept all his maintenance and oil change records for the past 2 years since they've owned it.

Just some background. I found this car being sold by a florida wholesaler. It was extremely clean and I had an inspection done on the vehicle prior to making an offer to buy it. My parents have owned the vehicle approx. 2 years now. We're in Michigan.

The issue:
My parents wanted me to find some new rims for the car and I just recently found some on ebay so I've had the car with me this week. I was driving the car down the freeway last night when I noticed some very slight pinging. Moments later the oil light came on. My thought was to immediately find an exit and figure out what the problem was. As I was coming up to a closed exit ramp due to construction the car made a grinding noise then all of a sudden the engine just stopped! Mind you it was less than a minute from when the oil light came on to when the engine quit.

At this point I was driving at about 70 mph! As I was coming up to the construction area I had to immediately swerve into the shoulder through the construction cones and muscle it to stop at the shoulder. Let me tell you that it was very scary. Since I was coming up to a busy mall area there was tons of traffic around me. Obviously since there was no power to the engine the steering was hard to control and the brakes were hard to push down. I'm scared to think about what would've happened had it been my parents driving the car.

Well, I believe the engine is toast. Some other motorist was kind enough to help me push the vehicle through the closed exit that was being worked on just so I can get it off the freeway shoulder. Fortunately the exit that was closed was about 99% done and I was able to move some of the construction barriers to get through. Now it's sitting in a McDonalds parking lot.

My next move? I've been doing some research last night on the engine sludge problem and some of the lawsuits and I wondered what my next course of action could be. I think I'm going to call the dealership this morning.

Any other suggestions??
thanks in advance.

 

Well after a little more research I found a ton more information on Toyotas Sludge-Repair Program.

I'm going to contact Toyota and make a claim. I also have some contact information on some of the court appointed lawyers representing the lawsuit that I will call first thing Monday morning.

If anyone else has some suggestions please let me know. thanks!

**crosses fingers**

 

Um, before you go and jump on the sludge repair bandwagon. First thing you need to do is have to car towed and analyzed as to the true cause of the engine failure. This way you have documentation as to what the true nature of the failure was, as well as your service receipts to establish when your last oil change was, maintenance, etc. This will only help you in the long run by showing that the car is very well cared for however this problem still did occur. Seems to me, from what you wrote, that the service records are not a problem to establish; so you truly need to find out what caused the failure and then proceed from there.

 

Yes of course. It will be looked at this week for sure to know the true cause of the failure.