Oil leak leads to blown motor without warning

[JAPeterson]

Actually all they need to do is to set up a engine shut down circuit that is triggered by low oil pressure.

I built some of them to put onto high performance VW engines that I used to build. If the pressure dropped below a certain PSI the engine was shut off. There was enough of a delay that even with the transmission engaged there usually was no damaged done to the engine even with it turning over while going down the road shut off..

 

[Drewmcg]

Don't you think that might trigger a safety issue in traffic? True, you'd have the same issue if the engine fails, but at least then it would be the laws of physics causing the issue, and not the manufacturer's design.

 

[ChadR_07]

I think the best fix would be if a manufacturer of luxury German cars developed a reliable system to trigger a dashboard amber warning "check oil" light, to illuminate at next startup, if the oil level measured 5 minutes after engine shutoff is below a certain level.

I thought about the same thing solution. It may not have worked in this situation as I was driving for long stretches at a time and as such the trigger point may not have been reached on the last startup. But this would be one good check.

Additionally, for the runtime scenario, the oil pressure switch could be combined with a bit more intelligence...i.e. cross reference the pressure to the current RPM. Though 10psi is not an issue at idle, but it is at 5,000 RPM. Use the two data points together to determine if there is a low pressure situation.

The combination of these two would likely cover most of the issues.

 

[Mbrooks420]

These would be great ideas IF Ford cared about more than getting you out of the warranty period. They don’t want their vehicles to have very long lifespans. If they did they would have fixed the crappy V6 transmissions they had for decades, or the crap SOHC design that they knew was garbage. They lasted long enough to get the car paid off and the warranty over, so they didn’t bother. They already had your money.

 

[JAPeterson]

Don't you think that might trigger a safety issue in traffic? True, you'd have the same issue if the engine fails, but at least then it would be the laws of physics causing the issue, and not the manufacturer's design.

It wouldn't have to shut the engine off completely, perhaps trigger a horn right in front of the steering wheel where the driver would notice it, flashing lights in the dash or even perhaps sending out a signal to disable the cell phone that the driver is talking on.

 

[RhinoQuartz]

I think the best fix would be if a manufacturer of luxury German cars developed a reliable system to trigger a dashboard amber warning "check oil" light, to illuminate at next startup, if the oil level measured 5 minutes after engine shutoff is below a certain level. After a few years the system could migrate to more mainstream vehicles (assuming internal combustion engines are still around).

Every S Class feature ever.