Shop forgot to add oil back in engine, engine seized please read Im begging
2011 Lexus ES350, automatic around 177k miles
I put the car in the shop on 7/3 to replace my front pads, rotors, tie rod ends, sway bar & links, alignment and a routine oil change. It was a pretty penny, but I explicitly said on the phone that I was happy to schedule these repairs because of how good the engine and transmission is on the car.
I live about 5 minutes from the shop and didnt notice anything when I drove the car home. Didnt drive the car 7/4. Today, 7/5 I went out to breakfast with my family and on the way home I noticed a few things:
- The AC was not very cold, would go through periods of hot air then cold air
- As I pulled into my neighborhood I saw some fluid squirt out of the front of the car and onto the hood
- As soon as I parked home, the car seized and the check engine, oil and battery lights all turned on. I made 1 attempt to turn the car on but the engine was dead.
I check the dipstick and it comes out dry. I cleaned it, put it back in and out again and nothing. There is no oil in this car. I've looked under the car and have confirmed no visible or obvious oil leaks. The oil filter under the car is clean, no oil around it. I did see some coolant leaking though because the cap had blown off. That's the fluid I saw squirt out onto the hood earlier. I assume the lack of oil caused the engine to overheat and the coolant rapidly boiled and blew the cap off. Im assuming, but Im not that good with cars so please tell me if this is plausible. Ive taken photos of the dry disptick, warning lights and fluid on the hood and do have my invoice receipts from work done. I've arranged a tow with my roadside assitance to bring the car back to my mechanic shop tomorrow morning and have left a voicemail to my shop advising them of what I've observed, what I think the issue is and that I'll be bringing the car back in for a full engine inspection for damage. I expect them to remove the valve cover, check cylinder compression, assess the bearings etc. etc. all of it and repair or replace the engine.
My concern here is I cannot afford any more repairs at this time. My anxiety is through the roof right now. I'm married with a 6 month old, we're moving to a new home literally in 2 weeks and this is our only vehicle. We cannot afford to miss work because the car is in the shop and I dont know what else to do but hope that my mechanic makes good and repairs or replaces my engine.
What are my options here? Is it right to give my mechanic the opportunity to make this right or should I take it elsewhere for a damage inspection and take it up insurance? Who's insurance, mine or my mechanics? Is there a specific type of liability insurance shops have that covers technician errors like this? Does damage like this typically warrant an engine replacement? How strong is my case if they refuse to cooperate and I need to escalate this legally? If I have to rent a car or pay for an inspection or otherwise have to foot any amount of money out of pocket is the shop responsible to cover these costs? I have never dealt with something like this and I just want my car to be a fully operating vehicle again, like it was before the shop, for my family. I have taken such good care of the car, the car is clean registered with current tags, insured everything.
Thank you for reading, please help me understand how to handle this situation. Thank you again.
EDIT: I figured out how to post a video on Imgur so y'all can see me confirm no oil on dipstick. Thank you.
https://imgur.com/a/7OaTHLe
UPDATE: First of all, I want to thank everyone for their advice regardless of what the situation actually ended up being. I'm no mechanic, so a lot of what's commmon sense to y'all was a learning curve for me. As many of you pointed out, there was definitely some, but still low, oil in the engine. I recorded them draining the oil and it came out about a quart short but that wasn't the issue.
As it turned out, my radiator cracked and it caused the engine to overheat and shut down. This is shocking to me because I had them perform a bumper to bumper inspection on it on 7/3 and they claim they didn't see anything wrong at the time. It's a 15 yr old radiator and likely cracked due to general wear and tear. It's gonna cost me around $850 to replace the radiator. I dont really have much of a choice. They've ordered a replacement and it'll arrive tomorrow. Before they commit to charging me for the new radiator, they're going to perform a compression test and a leak down test to determine if the head gasket blew or if any cylinders are warped. If the engine has zero compression, then putting in a new radiator would be a waste of money. https://imgur.com/a/fAMwYGD
As far as I understand, and again Im not a mechanic, a bad head gasket would result in plumes of white smoke coming out of the tailpipe and I would hear a loud clunk and the engine would fail to start. Please advise. The good news, as I'm assuming it, is that this morning I was able to succesfully turn the car on (which I probably shouldnt have done but I wanted to see if it would even turn) and the car started just fine. No noise, no smoke, no rough idle, the car didnt immediately overheat and no indicator lights at all not even the check engine. I'm hoping this is good news and that I'm extremely lucky it isn't any worse. Is there anything I could be missing here? Anything else I should have them check on, any concerns this immediately brings y'all, anything that would be easy to overlook? My mechanic is very sympathetic to my concerns and are offering to help me out with the costs since I literally just dropped a grand on repairs the other day. This is far from over, and I'm waiting to hear back from them tomorrow to determine any issues with the engine and I'll go from there. Thank you again for everyone's help. I'll post another update tomorrow.