Missing skidplate???
 

I just noticed my skid plate is gone and my car is leaking a lot of oil. I think the place that changed my oil forgot to put it back on and somehow the underside of my car has been damaged. My question is could it have fallen off on its own without me noticing. I would have thought it would have been rather noisey or I would have felt like I had run over something. But none of those things have happened. I just noticed when I was trying to investigate a brown puddle when I realized that I could stick my whole head under the car and see everything which was rather unusual.

I'm kinda worried, the last oil change I had was a month ago at the local suby dealer. No one has touched my car since. I just can't believe such a big thing went missing.

Edit, the oil seems to be coming from a leaky valve cover gasket. The weird thing is that the car has never leaked oil in the past and now its all over the gasket. Just seems both these things came up around the same time so I've wondered if they could be related. I'm gonna have to wait until monday to call the dealer to find out if they have my skid plate laying around.

I found it, just as I thought. It was the suby dealer. They claimed it fell of initally but I got them to doubble check and it turned out some odd part was laying around and they did not know what it was so they were waiting for someone to lay claim. Bastards. I wonder how much underbody damage occured because of running like this in bad weather for a month, any ideas? Oh, they are so going to get it if my other mechanic says damage occured because of this.

I doubt they are related
 

The dealership showed poor workmanship for not replacing the splash shield, but I highly dount the lack of splash shiled contributed in any way to your leaking valve cover.

Todd

Re: I doubt they are related
 

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Indeed. A lot of people, myself included, run with no splash guard. Our undercarriages exposed to the breeze as it were... with no I'll effects that I know of, except a bit more dirt:eek:

Well, the only thing that had me confused about this was the fact that I noticed both things at the same time. My car has never leaked or burned a measurable amount of oil until this last month without the splashguard. Now I've lost 1 and 1/2 quarts. I donno about you guys but I would think I would need the guard, living up here in Maine with all the crap on the roads. The weather has been very harsh in the last month too, sub 0 temps and tons of snow.

Did they perhaps put synthetic in when they changed the oil, thus conditioning the seals and giving you a bit of leakage? I am willing to bet this is a coincidence of timing. The oil change/mechanic should be the issue vs. the splashguard not being installed. Hmm:confused:

That might be possible actually, my last SVX always had synthetic put in it by these guys because it ran synthetic when I got it. I told them to use regular with this car since thats what it came with but if they screwed up with the skid plate this bad I assume its possible to put the wrong oil in. I'd think they would want to avoid that since I was paying $20 for the oil change and thats less than the synthetic would cost.