I took my 2019 Mazda CX5 Turbo into a Mazda dealer for it's first 5,000 mile maintenance and while driving back to my town noticed that the check oil light was on. I called the service department and asked them why that would happen and the service manager said he didn't know. Told him that after turning engine off and then turning it back on the oil light was off. He said then to not worry about it. 3 days later drove it again putting about another 55 miles and once again noticed check oil light on again. I took it to the Mazda Dealer in that city where they discovered that the dipstick registered no oil at all and when they pulled the pan there was only 2 quarts in the pan. They drained that remaining oil and filled it with 5 quarts of oil. I am afraid that driving the car this far with such low oil will cause premature engine problems or failure in the future. What should I do?
1 Answers
What should I do?
Hope for the best.
If the oil light was red, not yellow, it's not the "check oil" light. It's the "stop driving immediately, oil pressure low!" light. There's a risk of imminent engine damage with low oil pressure.
If the light was yellow (which it probably wasn't given that it turned off automatically and wasn't "sticky") then you probably haven't suffered engine damage. However, the 2 vs 5 quarts was somewhat worrying, I'd bet the car doesn't have 3 quart difference between "low" and "full" marks (my car has only 1.5 quart difference).
This sounds like the dealership didn't put enough oil in the 5000 mile service, if the problem happened immediately after it. However, the oil light made this problem your responsibility.
You can't demand them to change or overhaul the engine just because you ignored the red oil light. The correct action upon seeing the red oil light would be to have the car towed back to the dealership and demand them to put more oil in.
So, that's why your only option is to hope for the best. Continue driving the car, keep an eye on oil consumption in the future, while saving money for your next purchase / engine replacement / engine overhaul at the same time. In the best case, the car works just fine, and requires no engine replacement or overhaul.
Edit: should've read the comments
I need to clarify something and have to say that I know very little about cars so when I the oil light went off I asked the service manager why it would come on and then go off after just having an oil change. He said it didn't know why it would do that but since it went off not to worry about it.
This is bad advice. If you have this in writing, you could kindly ask them to investigate the engine and repair any damage, if necessary. Having such bad advice in writing would be very useful evidence in a court of law (but legal advice would be out of the scope of this site), and I'm sure the dealership would understand that too.
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