Sadly, this may just have to be put into the category of life’s lessons learned the hard way.
I have never had a turbo, but reading through this thread I have learned quite a bit in case I ever do. Watching an episode of “Wheeler Dealers” the other day, they bought a car with an aftermarket turbo timer, which looks like a good idea. Even with that, Ole’ Edd China had to replace the turbo on this car. They had some very good explanations of how the turbo works, at very high revolutions, and increased temperatures, and the need to treat it with respect; above and beyond the normal maintenance of a non turbo vehicle.
Since the cause of the blown turbo appears to be owner neglect, had they done that they would have had to deny your warranty coverage, as the warranty does not cover parts that break due to owner negligence. They did you a favor.
They did. It’s in your owner’s manual. You are responsible for knowing what the manual says and following its instructions.
You can take them to small claims court if you want, but if they mount an even marginally competent defense they will point out that your turbo died because of sludge, and the sludge was caused by your negligence regarding oil changes (which, btw, they will find definitive proof of if they search your name on Google, as this thread is the top search result).
I would like to encourage you not to take the dealership to court, as they did you a big favor by replacing the turbo for you, and shops who do nice things for their customers like that should not be punished by having to deal with lawsuits resulting from them - that’s how you turn a decent, generous shop into a tight-fisted no-quarter shop.
Shadowfax, if I understand Kevin’s posts, he changed the oil per the manual’s schedule, and paid for the first turbo replacement, as it was slightly out of warrantee.
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…and a good paralegal (like me!) will undoubtedly take the time to do just that.
I was able to help the Deputy AG for whom I worked to easily win a child abuse/child neglect case by doing a Google search for the child’s mother.
While Mommie Dearest denied the drug & alcohol abuse with which she was charged, her My Space page had some graphic photos of her using narcotics and swigging booze out of a bottle, along with some descriptive text on her sexual peccadlllos and drug adventures with various and sundry men. (How people can be so…incredibly stupid…as to post graphic stuff like that is a mystery to me)
I printed this material that the mother had posted online, and my DAG introduced these pages into evidence as Exhibiit A.
Trust me…after the judge’s eyes receded back into their sockets, the trial was over–in our favor–in just a few minutes. As the old saying goes…Some days, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
No. They will find his followed Mazda’s documented maintenance schedule.
Where is his neglect?
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That’s what he says now.
Earlier in the thread, he said:
I thought I had synthetic oil as I requested and believed I was good for 10k-12k miles.
Here is the maintenance he stated in post #32
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Yeah, I know. Like I said, that’s what he says now, after people jumped on him for what he said before. He changed his story.
Honestly, I have trouble believing that a professional race car driver whose entire family raced cars and sold Italian exotics would have to turn to an internet forum to learn about oil changes. Something’s fishy with this entire story.
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I think that synthetic oil is good for 10-12k miles, but I still change it at 7500 miles.
…perhaps under certain conditions, but since most of us drive in what the car mfrs consider to be “severe service” conditions, IMHO, it would be foolish to go that far between oil changes.
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Especially when a turbo is involved.
You missed the point, what I think and what I do are not always the same. I like a little margin for error.
It appears that @kevin.weisinger does the same thing. He said that he thinks that synthetic oil is good for 10-12k miles, but he also said that he changed it every 7500 miles.
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The maintenance schedule shows to change the oil every 4 months/5,000 miles; https://www.mazdausa.com/siteassets/pdf/manuals-and-guides/2010/2010-cx7-maintenance-schedule.pdf
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Since, by the OP’s own admission, he went way beyond that number of miles between oil changes, if he does decide to take this to court, the defense will be a slam-dunk for the attorney representing Mazda.
And, then there is the issue of whether he was actually using synthetic oil or if he was using a synthetic blend, as he seems to imply.
If he was, in fact, using a synthetic blend and went 7,500 miles between oil changes, then the cause of the sludging is obvious.
I don’t follow your logic.
The driving pattern of the vehicle, (150 miles/day all interstate), clearly falls into Mazda’s “Schedule 1” maintenance for 7,500 mile oil changes.
Mazda requires that an ILSAC rated oil be used. All the synthetic blend oils I’ve looked up meet ILSAC.
What part of Mazda’s required maintenance did he not meet?
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You may well be correct, but–given the contradictory posts from the OP–it is very difficult to determine where the truth lies.
From what I can tell the OP believes, given the failed turbo, the shop should as part of being diligent have done more than just replace the turbo part with a new one. This seems a reasonable expectation to me. As a diy’er anyway, if I had a vehicle configured with a turbo and it failed, I’d definitely be concerned bits of metal debris from the failed turbo might have found their way into places they shouldn’t. So I’d drain the oil and sieve it for metal debris. Change the oil filter. And I’d inspect the post-turbo air intake area for metal debris there too, maybe using a vdo inspection camera to look inside the intake manifold, and the combustion chamber so I could see the valve area from both sides. And I’d remove the valve covers and take a look into that area to look for signs of oil sludge around the valve train.
It’s true that the OP’s delayed maintenance may have caused the original turbo failure. And the effects of that might have persisted and caused the second one to fail too. But even so, it seems like I’d expect my shop to do more than just replace the turbo with a new one without doing more to see why the first one failed and other damage it might have caused when it did fail.
I should add that I think it is a little unfair for the OP to name the shop here, without also giving them the opportunity to respond. No disagreement on that point.
One thing we don’t know is how his wife actually drove the vehicle…
;-]
Weather is subjective but Wiki describes Arkansas summers as hot and humid. I think any dealer in that area would follow maintenance schedule #2
After one weeds through all the clutter it boils down to one thing; neglect. No doubt the OP will be upset with me but to use a cliche’ phrase; it is what it is.
Another point about a court claim.
For the sake of discussion, if the OP wins the case then there’s the matter of collecting. The original case will give them a judgement. Collecting the judgement is quite often many times harder than winning the judgement.
With judgement in hand one can garnish bank accounts and so on but that leads to the “discovery” part of things. The defendant may refuse to talk and it then becomes the plaintiff’s job to find out which one of 200 banks the dealer is using. And the banks are not going to talk either unless you start bringing action against them; assuming one even finds out which bank the dealer uses.
Regarding that 10-12K miles oil change interval; that was the same interval the lady with the 2009 Chevy Traverse used along with the OLM. That led to oil sludging, oil consumption, a blown engine at 40k miles, and no warranty coverage due to neglect. The long time regulars may remember that one from not many years ago.