Can bad gas cause spark plugs to fail (weeks later)?
Greetings,
TL;DR: Mother charged $700 because dealership claims the gas she filled up two weeks prior was bad and damaged the spark plugs, so they had to be replaced (instead of being replaced under the extended warranty). Does that sound plausible?
I'm not a car mechanic, enthusiast (unless we're talking about Tesla, sorry), or have much knowledge beyond a grade 9 automotive class, hence I'm reaching out to this community and hoping you can set me on the right direction.
Earlier this month my mother's car (a 2016 Hyundia Elantra) wouldn't start (weeks after it's last gas fill up, though driven daily). She had the car towed to the manufacturer's service centre (dealership), they corrected the issue and left her with a bill for $700+, due to "bad gas". My mother paid extra for an extended parts warranty with the manufacturer when she bought the car, so when my wife and I heard about this, something didn't smell right. When we used to drive an ICE car, taking it into the manufacturer service centre we would almost always come out with a $700 bill after each check up, so we're intimately familiar with the scams these places pull (or at least the unreliability of parts in an ICE car).
We took a look today at the receipt and service detail that was provided by technicians that outlines the troubleshooting done, and determination of cause to try and understand how they came to the determination that it was bad gas, this is word for word what it says:
Again, I don't understand all of the words in the description provided, but I'm assuming that #'d list more or less says the same thing? What doesn't make any sense is how they made the determination that it was bad gas. I see that they identified the spark plugs were bad (they cleaned them, but they still didn't work, so then they replaced them). They also replaced the oil for what reason I'm not sure. It appears the combination of replacing the spark plugs and oil, allowed the car to start -- I don't see the correlation with bad gas.
I started googling for things like "spark plugs bad gas", "damage bad gas causes", etc... To my surprise I was expecting to find stories of dealerships using this as a way to scam people out of their warranties, instead I didn't find much of anything, including any connection between bad gas damaging spark plugs. So I decided to search for "Hyundai Elantra Faulty Spark Plugs", now I did found a slew of results and videos of people showing how to replace spark plugs on a Hyundai Elantra .. nothing that jumps out and says they are explicitly faulty, but an odd amount of people talking about how to do it that would make me think these go wrong frequently enough to warrant the attention.
Another thing I noticed when searching bad gas, every occurrence of someone confirming they had gotten bad gas, they said they realized almost immediately, as their car stopped working or acting funny right after driving away from the gas station. So my mother driving with bad gas for 2 weeks, doesn't seem plausible.
Looking at this from what I've read so far, it looks like something that should have been covered under the extended warranty (spark plugs), wasn't and instead blamed on bad gas, so my mother would have to pony up $700.
Considering you guys are much more knowledgeable about these things, is the dealership right and it's a plausible explanation for the spark plugs failing, or does what I think happened happen?
P.S. Called the gas station where she had filled up prior to ask about the bad gas, see if anyone else reported the same, waiting for a call back from the manager next week.
TL;DR: Mother charged $700 because dealership claims the gas she filled up two weeks prior was bad and damaged the spark plugs, so they had to be replaced (instead of being replaced under the extended warranty). Does that sound plausible?
I'm not a car mechanic, enthusiast (unless we're talking about Tesla, sorry), or have much knowledge beyond a grade 9 automotive class, hence I'm reaching out to this community and hoping you can set me on the right direction.
Earlier this month my mother's car (a 2016 Hyundia Elantra) wouldn't start (weeks after it's last gas fill up, though driven daily). She had the car towed to the manufacturer's service centre (dealership), they corrected the issue and left her with a bill for $700+, due to "bad gas". My mother paid extra for an extended parts warranty with the manufacturer when she bought the car, so when my wife and I heard about this, something didn't smell right. When we used to drive an ICE car, taking it into the manufacturer service centre we would almost always come out with a $700 bill after each check up, so we're intimately familiar with the scams these places pull (or at least the unreliability of parts in an ICE car).
We took a look today at the receipt and service detail that was provided by technicians that outlines the troubleshooting done, and determination of cause to try and understand how they came to the determination that it was bad gas, this is word for word what it says:
Now, like I said, I know next to nothing about cars. However, I'd say, I can find pretty much anything I'm looking for after a few visits to my most reliable friend - Google. Based on the description of the troubleshooting done above to me it sounds like the technician did the following:Tech Cause: verified, crank no start. remove plugs and clean and dry off. still no start. ground out plug and crank, spark is week. gds diag. pending codes for mis-fire #1 and #2. change out oil. and replace plugs. veh. now starts. veh. has contaminated fuel. needs tank emptied. and new gas.
Tech Comments: no start diag. 1.5
- Verified car wouldn't start.
- Cleaned off the spark plugs.
- Car still wouldn't start.
- Diagnostic codes showing misfires on cylinders #1, #2
- Replace spark plugs, replace oil.
- Car now starts.
- Blame it on the gas?
Again, I don't understand all of the words in the description provided, but I'm assuming that #'d list more or less says the same thing? What doesn't make any sense is how they made the determination that it was bad gas. I see that they identified the spark plugs were bad (they cleaned them, but they still didn't work, so then they replaced them). They also replaced the oil for what reason I'm not sure. It appears the combination of replacing the spark plugs and oil, allowed the car to start -- I don't see the correlation with bad gas.
I started googling for things like "spark plugs bad gas", "damage bad gas causes", etc... To my surprise I was expecting to find stories of dealerships using this as a way to scam people out of their warranties, instead I didn't find much of anything, including any connection between bad gas damaging spark plugs. So I decided to search for "Hyundai Elantra Faulty Spark Plugs", now I did found a slew of results and videos of people showing how to replace spark plugs on a Hyundai Elantra .. nothing that jumps out and says they are explicitly faulty, but an odd amount of people talking about how to do it that would make me think these go wrong frequently enough to warrant the attention.
Another thing I noticed when searching bad gas, every occurrence of someone confirming they had gotten bad gas, they said they realized almost immediately, as their car stopped working or acting funny right after driving away from the gas station. So my mother driving with bad gas for 2 weeks, doesn't seem plausible.
Looking at this from what I've read so far, it looks like something that should have been covered under the extended warranty (spark plugs), wasn't and instead blamed on bad gas, so my mother would have to pony up $700.
Considering you guys are much more knowledgeable about these things, is the dealership right and it's a plausible explanation for the spark plugs failing, or does what I think happened happen?
P.S. Called the gas station where she had filled up prior to ask about the bad gas, see if anyone else reported the same, waiting for a call back from the manager next week.