Yesterday my car started to make a ticking noise that I was not very happy to hear. The car was a gift from my wife’s uncle, and the reason he was giving it away was that it needed new lifters. Since he had another vehicle, he didn’t need to go to the expense of having this one fixed. The garage bill to fix the lifters wasn’t cheap, but it was a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a car, so it was a great deal for us.

The ticking made me really nervous because it sounded like it was coming from the lifters again. For some reason, when I left work yesterday, I thought “maybe the noise is because the engine is short on oil?” I check my car’s fluids quite regularly, so I thought there was no way that this could be the case.

Well, I stopped and got a fill of psycho-expensive gas (grrr), then checked my oil. Sure enough, it was low. So I bought a litre of oil, and put it in. This time when I checked, no oil registered on the dip-stick at all. Huh? It seems that it was taking some time for the oil to drip down, so when I was checking the oil and it looked like it was OK, or only needed one litre, it was actually much lower. So I added another litre - and now the oil was up to the fill line, meaning I still had one more litre to go.

So after putting the third litre of oil in, I was ready to be on my way. I was hoping that as soon as I started the engine, the loud ticking sound would go away. Unfortunately, it didn’t. Visions of another trip to the garage to fix the lifters yet again flashed through my mind.

But about 5 minutes down the road, the engine quieted down, and has stayed that way. So, hopefully I’ve narrowly missed needing another visit to the garage. Who knows, of course, how much damage was done while the oil was so low… Time for an oil change, I think.

So what have I learned? Take more time and be more careful when checking an engine’s oil… things may not be as they appear.