Jiffy Lube drained transmission pan and overfilled oil

Ok. So just looking for some advice. At my last oil change. I took the truck to Jiffy Lube (I know, my first mistake). Turns out they drained my transmission pan and filled oil on top of existing. (Never drained oil). I found this out after having transmission issues right after oil change. Bad shifting, hi reving, hard time finding gears, etc. I didn’t put 2 and 2 together till I tried to figure out transmission issue this week. Did a simple drain and fill and found the tranny was 4 quarts low on fluid. I called Jiffy Lube and they are going to review their bay camera. Manager asked if I had checked oil and if it was over filled? I told him I had not as I just thought I had a transmission issue. After talking to him, I checked the engine oil. And guess what, dip stick showed oil about twice as far as full indicator. Need to know what to do! Thanks everyone! First time posting but have used the forum for info in the past.

 

Find yourself an attorney, probably gonna need one.

 

As they say, junk yards are full of Jiffy Lube engines. Guess we’ll add trannys to that as well. Good luck, hope it all works out.

 

This is it right here, start making calls Monday morning, sorry man.

 

That's a rough go, OP. Good advice so far. Fair warning, because it always happens, you're going to get a lot of "you should do your own oil changes" and "you should have checked before you pulled out of their parking lot" type of comments. Don't let them bother you. This is a great community, but sometimes things get a little western. The advice and comments will 99% be coming from a place of trying to help you out and avoid issues like this in the future, so just let it roll off you.

You've found one of the best places on the internet. Welcome!

 

Welcome to the forum, sorry for the circumstances that brought you and best of luck in this process, 2 most expensive bits on your truck and they fiddled with them.

We all have a story... My wife was in college in Toledo Ohio and took her car (Pontiac G5) to a Tire Man where they forgot to put oil back in. Destroyed the motor and she had it towed back to the Tire Man, but she didn't check the oil level before it was towed so she couldn't prove they did the damage. Her car was totaled.

 

By running the engine with that much extra oil, the crankshaft will turn the oil in to foam starving the engine oil. If you ran the engine for more than a minute, you’ve already done irreversible damage. It may not show up now, but it will down the road. At the very minimum, I would demand a new engine and some type of warranty on the motor. As stated before, I would contact a lawyer. Good Luck!

P.S. I know they have cameras up top, but not sure if they have them in the pit

 

Happened with one of my employees. His wife took their BMW to the dealer (BMW), to get oil changed. They drained it but never filled it back up. She didn’t get too far when she noticed an issue. Long story short is the dealer denied any wrong doing and their next step was lawyer/ court. Not sure what happened because shortly afterwards he left.

 

See what the oil place intentions are and go from that point. If they say “Nope” then your next call should be to an attorney asking if they will take a case like yours.

sorry about what happened, it happens but really double sucks when it happens to you.

A stupid mistake from some that are not paying attention!! Best of luck to ya!

 

Draining the wrong pan is a problem with the Tacomas also. Toyota could have easily prevented this with some type of identification on the
A/T pan.

 

Good point, might be able to die stamp ATF DR or similar

 

Agree. I’m new to Tundra’s and only changed the oil twice. Once was last summer on my daughter’s 2007 Tundra Ltd CrewMax which is now mine, and a couple days ago on her “new” 2011 Tundra Ltd Double Cab. Both are 5.7s. I had to think a bit with regards to where the engine oil drain plug was, because at first it looked like a trans pan with all the small bolts and narrow deep pan. I then noticed the trans drain plug further back. I could see how someone could mix up the two.

 

Welcome from LA (Lower Alabama)! You have already received some good advice for next moves. Please keep us posted on the outcome.

 

If you can't tell a transmission from an engine and can't use a oil dip stick you should not be changing oil! I have done 100s of oil changes on mine and friends cars never have I done this. But if I did I would have spent 10 seconds pulling out the dipstick and would have caught the problem before driving the vehicle.

Good luck getting anything out of them. They never see to want to do the right thing. The did my parents oil changes for years and always said they checked the rear axle fluid. They never did the rear axle locked up and they almost crashed. A well respected local mechanic wrote and was willing to speak in public that he could tell nobody pulled the check plug on the rear axle because it was rusted to the cover. After in forming the owner that they get free lawyers through my father's employment the owner offer to pay half the cost to fix it. But only half.

 

Clearing up confusion is no problem.

But..... It's incredibly sad if someone hired to work on cars can not tell the difference between an engine and a transmission.

 

Great reason to have a cat shield - they can't get to the transmission drain plug!

 

Yeah, but only until the cam towers start leaking too much, the timing chain tensioner gets sticky or your tranny starts slipping a little. At that point, remove the shield and head down to Jiffy Lube with 5 witnesses in the cab and make sure two of them are lawyers.

 

That's awful. I'm almost bummed you didn't blow up the tranny before calling them. That thing is toast and who knows how hard they'll fight it since it's running still

 

Other than a good lawyer, you’re going to need a good mechanic who will testify that your engine and transmission ( even though they are still working) are short lived. Jiffy Lube has insurance for thing like this. Don’t settle for junkyard replacements.

 

All this sounds expensive, good luck OP, give us an update when you can. Just don't understand how that's mixed up. Not sure if this is the case for everyone else but on my 2021 the oil drain is a bolt (OE, fumoto now) and my transmission drain is a hex tool, is it the same in 2011? Without a doubt, shop was recklessly neglectful.

 

The times I have gone to those drive-through oil change places, they show me the oil level on the dip stick after they're done. Did they not do this?

 

At this location, they have you get out of the car. They don't show you the dipstick. You wait in their waiting room until the service is done. Having truck towed to my mechanic. Good guy, runs a good shop. He has already informed me that both tranny and engine have damage. Running that way did something he says. The drain plug on the tranny is a bolt. The level check is a 5mm allen key. Have not seen video yet. Picture attached shows how full engine oil is. Obviously nobody checked the dipstick.

 

On my 2021 the trans drain is a bolt. The Allen or hex bolt is the transmission check plug. So the trans drain bolt is kinda like the engine drain bolt, if you are blind or can't tell the difference between an engine from a transmission you might drain the wrong one.

 

Sorry to hear this OP. My bother had a somewhat similar event take place with JL. They forgot to put the cap back on the filler neck after doing an oil change. He had the oil changed prior to going on a 450 mile trip. Oil blew through the filler neck all over the engine bay until lost enough to cause damage. JL at this location had cameras installed in the work areas, which showed them not putting it back on. It took lawyers to get involved. JL then had replaced and repaired everything at their cost. Good Luck to you.

 

Jiffy Lube manager came to my house today to look at the truck. Said the oil was only 1 qt to 1.5 qt too full (based on the dipstick picture). He put his regional manager Eric on the phone. Eric says the didn't do anything wrong. Yesterday, manager said that that the regional manager Eric had looked at the video footage and that there was nothing done to the transmission. Today, when I asked Eric on the phone about that, he claims there is no video.

 

Yeah. Lawyer is now where you will need to go with this. Hopefully it does not go all the way and the thought of a lawsuit will sway their decision making down the road.

 

Does anyone have an opinion on how much oil is in the engine with the dipstick showing what it does?

 

I do know after my mishaps that the dipstick can measure high or low with even a half quart….i don’t think anyone will know how full it actually is. I would actually video tape you draining the oil and measuring how much they actually put in. The recommended capacity is about 8.5 quarts. You’re obviously going to have more.

The other thing is that oil looks relatively dark for such a recent oil change. When I do a change and check for the first few hundred miles the oil is relatively clear - almost hard to see on the dipstick.

And yeah - get a lawyer. The fact that he came to your house shows that he knows somebody messed up. They’re trying to cover their tracks with the “no video” and getting their regional manager Eric involved who miraculously knows that there is nothing with your truck despite not doing anything.

At some point it’s going to become a he said she said….thats way easier when you have a lawyer involved. But I would at least have an independent mechanic involved to do a once over and assess any damage. You will spend quite a bit on retaining a lawyer for this type of claim. They likely won’t take these cases on percentage of judgement (like an auto accident for example). The judgement would likely involve some type of assurance / warranty on the transmission or a lump sum to get you to go away.