A few weeks ago, my car dashboard put up a message – “oil life 15%, service due soon”. Normally, I make a service appointment pretty much as soon as that comes up. This time, however, “life happened”, and I delayed.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. I live in Miami, and Hurricane Irma was headed straight towards the Magic City. The state governor issued a mandatory evacuation order for my house, and my wife and I took off in the car.
Well, somewhere around central Florida, the car dashboard lights had a new message – “oil life 5%, service due now”. We went into a mini-panic, worried that the car would give up on us at the worst possible time – at night, along an unknown road somewhere in Georgia (nothing against the Peach State, I just don’t know its roads well), in the middle of a mass evacuation. So we decided to at least try to change the oil, and pulled into a Jiffy Lube kind of place. No luck. Because of the hurricane, the wait was at least an hour and a half, and the interstate was filling up with storm refugees, by the minute.
So we risked it. As the hurricane models evolved to project that it would affect areas farther and farther north, we kept driving more and more. By South Carolina, my dashboard changed to “service past due”, and a mileage counter cropped up, tallying the amount of miles it was past due by. At midnight on a lonely road in the Palmetto State, it was up to more than 100 miles past due. My wife and I were sweating bullets.
We got lucky. We managed to get to our hotel in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and the next day found a maintenance facility that did the scheduled checkup and oil change. But the experience was nerve-wracking, and made for a couple of very tense days, coming on top of the stress we already had because of the hurricane and our evacuee situation.
You got that right!
Don’t Make My Mistake – Heed the Dashboard Lights
Y’all know Murphy’s Law: if anything can go wrong, it will. I never neglected my car maintenance, until this one time. And this one time is when I had to evacuate my home. So, take it from me. Always keep you car well-maintained, since you never know when an emergency will require that you use it (especially if you live in an area at risk for hurricanes).
GIF from Giphy
That’s really sound advice, Rich Miser! I used to just “let things go” with my vehicle but have gotten better at keeping up with service.
Even more importantly, I try to rely on my bicycle as a primary means of transit. It sure helps to live in a pedestrian friendly community.
Nice piece!
Thanks Cubert! My experience showed me how you can’t neglect the maintenance, lest it become an issue at the worst possible time.
You could safely drive a couple of thousand miles past when an oil change is due with zero risk. If you did that every single time you would slightly decrease the life of your engine but one time will not have a measurable impact. As an engineer who made gasoline and motor oil for a living you can take my word on this.
Hey Steve,
You’re absolutely right; I wish I had known that at the time. Right then, I was really stressed out because of the hurricane. I have kind of an obsessive personality, and those dash warnings were driving me nuts 🙂
I appreciate your expertise!
I’m usually on top of it when it comes to getting an oil change done. That being said, we own three cars and two of them need a change and another needs new rotors. It’s taking the time to get it changed and it’s easier to drive the vehicle that still has the most miles to go. So, I greatly appreciate the reminder before a $50 bill turns into a $500 bill.
Wow, that’s a lot of cars to keep up with! 🙂