“’Ma’am, ma’am, I think your car is on fire.”
An Ohio woman believes her car was damaged—possibly beyond repair—at a Take 5 Oil Change. What was supposed to be a routine oil change ended in heavy smoke, leaking oil, and a phone call suggesting the 2017 Ford Explorer might actually be on fire.
Stephanie (@stephanie_ann_s) is clearly distraught in a recent TikTok clip. She says she made it through the past two weeks without her beloved Ford Explorer, which has been sidelined since a trip to a Take 5 Oil Change shop in her neighborhood. What started as a quick errand on a day off from her job has since spiraled into an expensive and stressful ordeal to get the vehicle back up and running.
“I can’t even understand why a company thinks that it’s OK to let your vehicle sit for two weeks and have zero accountability,” she says in video. “I honestly don’t have the money to take it to a Ford dealership right now because I got quoted $250 an hour just to look at it.”
Stephanie says there was nothing noticeably wrong with the Explorer when she arrived at Take 5. She says the shop changed the oil and air filter, and she noticed smoke in her back window almost immediately after pulling away.
She says she immediately returned to the shop, and an employee checked the dipstick and told her the engine had oil. She says that after she left again, the smoke grew thick enough that she could barely see through the rear window.
Next, she says her phone rang, and the Take 5 manager from the shop she had just left was on the line.
“’Ma’am, ma’am, I think your car is on fire,’” she recalls him saying.
The Explorer was not on fire, but Stephanie says she pulled into a Kroger parking lot roughly a quarter-mile away as smoke continued pouring from the vehicle. She says the manager met her there and checked the engine again. She says smoke came from around the dipstick opening and oil fill area while the vehicle sat.
Rather than risk driving the Explorer home, Stephanie says she and her husband rented a car hauler. She says the SUV smoked when they started it to load it, and oil ran from beneath it when they unloaded it at home, leaving a visible trail to where they parked.
Nearly two weeks later, she says her husband climbed underneath for a closer look. He found that oil was still dripping around the filter area, while the engine no longer showed oil on the dipstick, Stephanie says.
One viewer immediately asked whether the filter had been installed incorrectly.
“I’m not sure honestly,” Stephanie replied. “We’ve only visually inspected it, haven’t touched anything.”
Stephanie says the Explorer has not yet received the professional inspection needed to determine what actually went wrong.
Stephanie says she paid about $130 for the oil change, but getting the Explorer professionally diagnosed could cost considerably more. A Ford dealership quoted her $250 an hour just to inspect the vehicle, which she says she cannot afford.
“I don’t have that,” she says.
Oil leaking around the filter does not establish what went wrong, but it does narrow the list of possibilities. FRAM notes that a filter can leak when its gasket is damaged or misaligned, when the filter is installed too loosely or too tightly, or when the old gasket is mistakenly left behind and a new one is installed over it.
The oil filter sits in a pressurized part of the lubrication system, so a faulty seal can quickly let oil escape while the engine is running. If enough oil is lost, pressure can drop, which means bearings and camshafts may no longer receive the lubrication they need.
Stephanie says Take 5 gave her a claim number but had not resolved the matter nearly two weeks later. The company tells customers contacting it or one of its locations that they should receive a response within three business days.
Other consumers have described filing vehicle-damage claims through Take 5’s third-party claims process, although those complaints do not establish what happened in Stephanie’s case.
Stephanie says the loss of the Explorer created another immediate problem because she works about an hour from home and could not afford to keep paying for a rental car. Her husband eventually bought another inexpensive vehicle so that she could continue getting to work.
She says she only went to Take 5 because the Walmart she normally uses was booked, and she unexpectedly had a day off from work.
“My random day off cost me my car,” she says.
Motor1 reached out to Stephanie via direct message TikTok comment as well as to Take 5’s parent company via email. We will update this story if either party responds.
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