DENNIS O’SULLIVAN

Dennis advises a woman who is fed up with her garage’s inability to identify the cause of an annoying engine tick.

QUESTION

Hi Dennis, my name is Julia. I have a 2013 Hyundai GT 2.0. I have put 168 thousand km on it as I commute from Simcoe to Hamilton. I work for a rental car company and the people that I work with are from the Hamilton area and they have suggested that I contact you.

My engine has that dreaded tick and cold weather makes it worse. I've had all oil changes done at the dealerships and accredited garages. I have my receipts. I've checked all sites regarding this problem. I have started to use better gas and 5050 synthetic oil changes instead of using regular oil. I don’t know if the oil filter used was a Hyundai original.

I've read in the Hyundai forum that Hyundai is notorious for this tick when a Hyundai oil filter is not used. My next step would be to have a full flush oil change with a high detergent to see if I can get rid of sludge. The forum is full of this problem under 120 thousand kms.

Have you any information on how to handle this if I go to Hyundai? There are no recalls for my model and year for this problem. I'm hoping it's an upper engine and not a lower rod problem. Do I have any hope of getting Hyundai to help?

Looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you, Julia

ANSWER

There are so many small items that can cause a vehicle to have a ticking sound in the morning and not only on your make of vehicle. I have heard ticking noises when it was the serpentine belt that was causing the ticking sound until the vehicle warmed up. It could also be a valve lifter leaking back overnight.

I want you to go to your dealer and leave the car overnight to let them see what type of noise that you are experiencing in the morning with your vehicle and then let me know what they tell you. Make sure that you take all your oil change receipts with you.

QUESTION

I have an insurance question for you. My daughter was driving my wife’s older car to school this past week and one day, while she was driving home, the car hit something on the road and punched a hole in the oil pan. By the time my daughter returned home, the engine was knocking badly. I called my insurance company and they told me to have the car towed to one of their preferred shops to have the car looked at.

My insurance company informed me that the oil pan was indeed damaged and that they would pay for the oil pan but not for the engine damage since my daughter drove the car home without any oil pressure.

The insurance company claims that she was driving the car when the oil light was on and that has done the engine damage and not the hole in the oil pan.

I was looking for your article about two to three years ago where you mentioned in your column that if you have a car problem on the road, such as a flat tire or whatever, do not stop on the road but try to get home with the car. My daughter did what you said but now the insurance company is telling me that she should have stopped on the road and not continued to drive the car with the oil light on.

Who is correct, you or the insurance company? Harry from Kitchener

ANSWER

To answer your question as to who is correct, we are both correct.

The insurance company is correct in telling you that your daughter should not have driven the car with the oil light on.

I am also correct when telling someone to continually drive their vehicle to the nearest help and not to stop on any type of deserted road but to keep on driving as long as the vehicle is moving in order to get help.

I checked the route that your daughter took from school to home and this is what I found: Your daughter, in the middle of the day, drove past two dealerships, four gas stations and at least one hundred houses – not exactly a deserted road or that she was in dire need to get home and she could have stopped in any one of these locations to ask for help.

I do not know but I also suspect that she had a cell phone and possibly could have asked for help from CAA if she has a membership.

There can be a play with words here because the insurance company can be correct in saying that the hole in the oil pan was not the direct cause of the engine damage but one can also say that the damage to the engine was the end result of the hole in the oil pan. There is not a lot of money involved when we are dealing with a thirteen-year old car with more than threehundred thousand kilometres and the insurance company is definitely not going to put a new engine in your car, nor do I suspect that they will put a used engine in it, either.

Even if the insurance company, on compassionate grounds, agrees to help you with your claim, when you look at one thousand dollars’ deductible, there will not be a lot of money left over to do anything with your car.