The Red Oil light. Came on in my 1998 chevy lumina after walmart did an oil change. I know that one oil light tells you when to change the oil and one tells you when the oil is low. But the Red oil light is for what? Is it for oil pressure or something else?
It means STOP driving, shut off the engine, lift the hood, and check the oil level. If the oil level is low, fill it. If it isn’t call AAA roadservice and get towed to your mechanic.
As to specifics, your best place to find that information is in your owner’s manual.
Apparently you’re saying that this isn’t covered in your owner’s manual, which would be very surprising, as it’s important information.
Was the oil level correct or not when you checked it?
The red light is for oil pressure, or lack of, and means your engine is in trouble and should be shut off immediately.
Whether Wal Mart is responsible for any problems might depend upon how many miles you traveled since the oil change was performed.
Yep, they may have used a faulty oil filter, not gotten the filter or drain plug tight, or failed to put any oil back in the engine. At any rate you need to go into litigation mode. They may owe you a new engine. First have it towed to a mechanic to check what happened. Make sure that the mechanic can document in writing, in pictures or both, what caused the problem. Make sure you get an oil sample from what is in there and have an analysis done. Notify Walmart right away so that they can inspect the car where it is at but don’t give it to them. Don’t just have the oil filled up again and drive away.
If the oil level is up, then you need to have an oil pressure check done to verify whether the pressure is actually low or the sending unit is bad. Hopefully its just a bad sending unit and everything else is fine. It does happen and Walmart might just be a coincidence.
I think if I owned one of those oil-changing places, I’d require the mechanic to take a digital photo of the drain plug, that it’s correctly installed, after every oil change. And take a photo of the dip stick level. I wonder if any of these quick oil change shops do that?
Or maybe there are so many ways to incorrectly install it, and still the photo makes it appear it is fully installed, taking a photo wouldn’t be very effective as proof. But at least it would remind the mechanic to double check it at least.
The floor manager of one oil change shop checks every car that leaves the shop to makes sure that all the fluids are topped off and that every item that was manipulated is back where it belongs before the keys are turned over to the cashier.
The only time I ever had to use one of those places they had one dummy in the pit and another on top going through the check list together. Now if the manager has to double check all the fluids and the drain plug every time, what’s the point in having the dummies? We used to have this discussion a lot when I worked-when the supervisor spends so much time supervising to error check, you are better off getting rid of the employee for someone that doesn’t require that much close attention.