Hello All,

I bought my 99 RX 300, with almost 80,000 miles four months ago from a Lexus dealership. The car is beautiful and immaculate. However, when checking my oil about two weeks after the purchase I was shocked to see that there was actually VERY little oil in the car, just a bit on the end of the dipstick, and what was there was VERY, VERY dirty - basically black with black bits in it. I was so horrified!! I had asked at least twice before leaving the dealership if the oil had been changed and all the maintenence done and was assured it had been done. I had been driving it a lot thinking that everything was fine. After this discovery I drove it immediately back to the dealership (almost 100 miles) for the oil change and was told there was no sludge in the engine.

I'm concerned that there may have been some damage done to the engine because of this. I have a lot of the receipts from the previous owner and they took it to the dealership for a lot of the services until about 40k and then they began going to Walmart and places like Jiffy Lube for the changes and obvoiusly stoppped using synthetic oil and went for the cheaper stuff.

I use only synthetic oil in it, changing it every 3,500-4,000 miles and will continue to do so for as long as I have it. It runs like a dream and there is no smoke or problems so far. Should I be concerned that it was being driven with such disgustingly dirty oil (and very little of it - barely any on the dipstick!)? Or would problems have shown up? I'm so concerned about engine sludge.

Any info or advice would be so greatly appreciated!

LilLex99

 

So, let me get this straight- you were so concerned about engine damage from low/dirty oil that you put another 100 miles on it driving to the dealer before doing anything about it?

In any case, you have probably lucked out- if the oil was so low that it was not being picked up by the sump, you would have noticed the oil-pressure light flickering on turns. So at least oil (albeit dirty oil) was being circulated at all times.

There's also a post on here about an owner who never changed his factory-fill oil until 20 or 30K was on his car, to no ill effect. Certainly not something to make a habit of, but you may have dodged the bullet on this one incident.

 

No, I did not drive back to the dealership without first adding two quarts of the best synthetic oil I could find.

Thanks for the reply, good to know that my car may be okay!

 

the amount of oil between F(full) mark and L(low) mark on the dipstick is exactly 1 quart of oil. Your car takes 5 quarts of oil so, in other words, you only have 4 quarts of oil in the oil pan. Probably the previous owner only put 4 quarts of oil in. Your car can survive with 4 quarts but it is safer to have 5 quarts.