Having issues starting my car, after running it with no oil in the engine

DANGELL

MEMBER
2001 ISUZU RODEO
3.2L
6 CYL
2WD
AUTOMATIC
225,000 MILES

My car was running just fine, then nothing, no light indicators came on or anything. I woke up to find that I couldn't start my car, so I figured it was just out of gas. I added five gallons of gas and then tried to start my vehicle and it still didn't want to start. Roadside assistance came out and explained to me that I had absolutely no oil in my car. I added three quarts of oil in hopes that it would get my car running but when I went to go start my car, we had to jump the battery first off because it had drain and so when we jumped it and I tried to start it this popping sound and a lot of white smoke came out of the exhaust.

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

Unfortunately, the engine has most likely failed and will need to be replaced.

Engines cannot run very long at all with no oil so if your engine got to the point of shutting off and will not restart then it most likely is not going to run again.

We can do a couple things to prove this and that would be to start with a compression test.

Here is a guide that will help with this:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/how-to-test-engine-compression

Next, we need to do an oil change and cut open the filter to check for metal and drain the oil into a clean pan and check the oil for metal. I understand this is new oil, but we need to find out if there is metal in the pan.

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/how-to-change-engine-oil-and-filter

Let's start with this info and we can go from there.

Thanks