re: Jiffy lube stripped my oil pan

I’ve had a drain plug on a tractor split and one 1/2 got stuck in the oil reservoir. I had to drop the reservoir to get the old plug out. But to the point IMO I would never use anything other than a basic torque wrench to screw the plug in & take one off. It’s too easy to make a costly mistake. I’ve seen all the lugs get cross threaded on 2 trailer tires bc there was way to much pressure in the air compressor. We put everything we had trying to get the lug nuts off.

Back in early 1980's I worked the Summer between sophomore and junior year of college at a Top 60 GM dealer in the world located in downtown Tulsa. Got the job as they had just the weekend before I got there had a major flood right as they also got cars delivered. 60+ cars underwater.

Anyway, they had just hired a driver for their Service Dept., guy about my age. He told about how his last job "some guy" at an oil change chain shop had left the plug out after draining a brand new Corvette and just in the time it took to park it, ruined the engine. So the guy got fired.

Turns out after the flood car cleanup they retained me at their body shop. Not a week later, the driver guy backs a DeLorean into a brick wall after servicing. Truth comes out then. He was the "some guy" also ruined the Corvette at previous employer. (the DeLorean was still sitting at the body shop while dealership and attorneys worked on settlement by the time I left for Winter Quarter back at LaTech)

I did my own oil changes until city life and low cars beat me down. My wife came home from a jiffy lube place and said her car sounded funny. I popped the hood and saw the oil cap was off, but fortunately nestled in the wiring harness.

Took it back and raised hell. It actually got funny because they knew they fricked up, and they were wipingit down and kissing arse like crazy.

Then hope it doesn't leak all the oil out while you are running down the interstate at 70+ MPH.

Sucks OP but mistakes happen. I don’t see why you are that upset honestly. They likely would have replaced the oil Pan had you pushed it. If it was truly stripped coming out, they should have told you immediately. Since they didn’t tell you until they put it back in then I’d have to make the assumption that they stripped it.

I often do my own oil but I do take it to oil change places on occasion. I’ve had an oil change place break something I believe it was the power steering pump or something like that. I can’t remember exactly, it was like a $40 part and they grabbed it and replaced it free of charge. Sucked because it took an extra hour or so for them to get it delivered and installed. But they were honest with me.

If you’ve never broken something on a car trying to fix something else then you haven’t turned a wrench many times imo.

I do all my own fluids in my Jeep. I’ve also thought extremely hard about buying a tire mount and balance machine so I can do that too. It’s so damn hard to find good lube and tire techs these days.

Mother's car freezes up one afternoon in front of a strip mall. Calls me and I rush over and see what the problem is. A dude is trying to tighten up her battery cables thinking it was a bad connection with a cheap set of tools. I get a socket set out and it wasn't the battery. Unable to recognize the problem, I call a wrecker and have it sent to her dealership. It was a Friday afternoon, so no one looked at it until Monday morning. The shop manager calls me and tells me to come down and look at something on her car. I get there and the car is up on the lift and he walks underneath and shows me the oil filter. It looked like it was tight and then reaches up and just pull it off. I said WTF, and he says whoever changed her oil put the wrong filter on it. Motors gone. My mother at the time lived here for six months and Diamonhead, Ms the other so I try and find her last oil change receipt. Well it was changed here and the owner is, was, a good friend of mine. I confront him with the news and he tells me he will replace the moter with a used one(her car had over 70,000 mi) and didn't want to submit his loss to his insurance company. I said fine, just make work like it did before the incident in which he assured me his mechanic can do this. Well he changes the engine and low and behold, the ABS light is on after the changing of the engine. Take it back to the dealership and the manager again tells me they burnt, jacked, whatever the ABS system, it gone. So back to the oil shop with a copy of the cost to replace the ABS unit. He tells me it wasn's his fault so I had to sue the MFer.

Yeah paying potentially more at the dealer to prevent a generally pretty cheap and easy fix is not money very well spent. The chances of it happening are very small, not to mention your time and money driving to the dealer. Oil change place is 2 mins from my house, dealer is 45 mins.

What happened the car?