Dealer left engine oil without the cap-went offroading heavy

hey guys. Need your advice here. Would be very helpful.

Mine is a 21 Taco TRD pro. At around 30k mileage, my dealer in boston after doing the oil change left the cap open. Not noticing, i drove around 2500 miles to Colorado the next few days and did offroading in the Telluride area. After 2 days of heavy offroading in sand and dust, i realized the oil cap was missing. Put an autozone oil cap and got another oil change immediately at a local toyota dealer and occasionally started noticing engine oil alerts, high heat transmission fluid alert, heavy white smoke from exhaust on extreme inclines on the trail. Took it to the local dealer in Colorado again stating these issues and they were pretty much unhelpful. They couldn't reproduce anything and said everything is fine with the truck and confirmed i am good to drive back to Boston

After 2 weeks drove back to boston(another 3000 miles) and took it to my dealer to check for any issues. After diagnosing, boston dealer did the below

1.Changed engine oil again and replaced with original TRD engine cap. He said oil was clean and no dust went through, so he don't see any concerns. Oil change was free of charge and reimbursed the other oil change i did in Colorado.
2.They noticed that output shaft seal between transmission and transfer case is leaking heavily and said they need to fix this immediately. They checked that the transmission oil was a quarter less currently but confirmed they found no metal shavings or anything in the oil when they flushed it and hence transmission is good. They put the new seal and changed the fluid. This is possible the reason for the alerts and white smoke from exhaust as per them.

I asked dealer to provide me extended warranty given the circumstances, but he said he can't do that because he doesn't see any issues because of the engine cap missing for a while and the transmission issue will now be treated as a pre -existing condition and future transmission issues will be taken care of beyond the warranty period as well.

Should i pursue the extended warranty, or you think i am good now?

Any comments will be helpful

 

Not being personal, but you should look at everything after anyone has touched your truck.

I did the same thing with a friends’ car on a camping trip we took through the desert in Highschool, not realizing we left oil cap off and dirt did get all over and into the engine. His dad sold the car soon afterwards. Feeling sorry that happened to you, must’ve been a terrible sight to see. Hope it works out!

 

^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^

 

Please tell us the dealer so we can avoid them. I live in your area.

 

Wow! Let's start with the mea culpa part, you should pop your hood open occasionally and check your oil level. And definitely do so after an oil change before you leave the service bay! You might have caught this if you did.

Not sure what else to say other than document everything and consider sending an oil sample off for analysis.

 

It’s not all the tech’s fault everyone should inspect any repair on their vehicle. So easy to play the blame game these days

 

As seen from the picture , the inside of the tube looks clean, dust sticks to oil . You should be ok. You can try to call corporate and ask nicely. Worst that could happen is they will say no .

 

Everything is okay but the white smoke from exhaust. You need to Google that and decide if you put your truck in any of those situations.

 

Sure, most of us get that. But the dealer seems to be brushing everything off.

 

One more thing to consider; can you even prove the dealer left it off or did they already fess up to doing so? But I do agree with the others saying that you are most likely fine here. But I would still send an oil sample off to Blackstone. Data rules the day brother!

 

I’d add to it to put a wrench on to make sure everything is tight. Took my daily driver to the dealer for the free oil change and they left the oil drain plug loose. It fell out while I was driving. Luckily I picked up that engine started to sound differently and pulled over before the low oil pressure light came on.

 

Oh gesh!

The worst I had was my oil pan was dangling by two bolts and making a clunking noise whenever I went over bumps after Jiffy Lube. I got home and saw that the tech couldn’t get the pan back on right because something was jamming it and it ended up being a Oil filter wrench was stuck on top of the oil pan. I stupidly drove a couple miles to get home before checking it. Never again!

 

Sounds like you got a free tool out of it

 

Multiples issues at hand… how extreme of angles did you attempt with the truck, during the white smoke incident. It isn’t related to the lack of oil cap…

As a side note you may never know the damages that may or may not have been caused by leaving the oil cap off … it’s really heard to prove excess wear and tear but you could send a sample of oil to Blackstone and see what sort of “silicone” levels are showing…

also have you taken a look at your air and cabin filters post adventure?

 

it seems like it is absolutely the techs fault...most people have no idea what they are looking at under the hood anyways.
OP payed for a service to be completed, and it wasn't.

OP I feel for you , fingers crossed, stay on the dealer, escalate it to corporate if/when needed. Get it documented as much as possible even if you don't get immediate results.

 

That’s why it’s even more important that we do the following up ourselves

 

Trade it in on a new one

 

yeah, they agreed to it

 

I mean... he left your cap wide open for all kinds of garbage that is flying... Look at your engine cover dude, its covered in dust, do you believe some of it didn't went in there ? Luckily its Toyota so I am sure it will take it fine.

But after doing something like that I wouldn't believe single word coming out of their mouth. Who knows what else they may forgot lol. If I were you, I would do oil change early too, just in case if some garbage got mixed up into filter, it would catch it and might be visible.

 

I was doing hells gate then. Pretty extreme angles everytime i saw the smoke. How does the oil sample help later on?