Questions and Answers

Flushed To Death Q. Hi there! Just a quick question. My boyfriend recently got an "engine oil flush" from Walmart on his 1988 Buick LeSabre. This car was taken care of excellently and only has 60,000 km (37,282 miles) on it, but one day, when he took it to get an oil change, the mechanic talked him into flushing his engine. (It was not one of those fancy machines, but the actual liquid that ran through the engine).

About two weeks later, we began to hear a lifter noise, and one week after that, the car just died and would not start. He took it to the garage and they said his timing-chain had gone. But we got a second opinion and it was concluded that the timing-chain had gone because the oil pump was not pumping, but sucking air!! This was concluded to be the cause of a stripped oil pump due to the "flush."

Now, a new engine later and a lot of money, he is trying to get Walmart to pay for the damages to the car, but they are denying that the engine flush had anything to do with it. I will remind you, that car ran excellently and was basically brand new (it was bought from his grandmother). If you ask me, that mechanic had no business offering an "engine flush" on an already well-maintained automobile.

What he did flush was my boyfriend's money away. If you would be so kind as to tell me what a "proper" engine flush procedure entails and where I can find some published documentation on this topic, because, believe it or not, the Internet has not been much help.

Thanks a million.
Christy in Canada

A. Well Christy, you know the obvious, he should never have gotten the flush. Anytime you go to a chain shop like Walmart or Sears or JC Penny, you need to keep one thing in mind. These guys work on commission. The more they sell you, the more they make. In addition since base pay is so low, they don't attract good quality mechanics. Now I'm not saying all chain stores are like this, and that all their mechanics are low quality, but there are enough that you have to beware.

A car with only 37,000 miles and well maintained does not need an engine flush. If the oil and filter is changed every 3,000 miles, it will never, ever need an engine flush.

There are a number of products and machines on the market that claim to clean your engine, but as I said before, regular oil changes will eliminate the need for any of them. What I use and what I recommend is if you want to run something through the engine to clean it, is to do a regular oil and filter change and replace one quart of oil with one quart of transmission fluid. This will clean the engine and will in no way harm it.

As for the immediate problem, I don't know what to tell you. I never heard of anything, short of a highly corrosive acid, that would eat at an oil pump enough to stop it from pumping oil. And short of a forensic engineer, I don't see how you could prove that Walmart was at fault.

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