My favorite rental car story

I hope this doesn't breach forum etiquette. When I first joined F-Chat, I posted this story in the 308/328 forum, but there are a lot of new people around and I think the story is good for one more telling.

I got a call from a rental company saying that one of their 308's was making a horrible screeching noise. This company was in Waikiki, in an old service station that was waiting for the inevitable redevelopment. I went down to have a look at the problem. The car was a black 308 coupe. It wasn an injected 2-valve car with a single, aftermarket turbo. The car was sitting on their lift. I got into the car and started the engine. As soon as I let the clutch out, there was a horrific, loud, ear piercing screeching sound.

I raised the car up and pulled the gearbox oil drainplug. Honest, nothing but a small puff of dry dust came out. The owner of the car was standing right there and when he saw that, he moaned and said a few choice bad words. I am sure the calculations of repair costs and downtime were going through his head. He said that he just had his people "service" the car with an oil change. He said the car was then sent out on rental, but it was back within an hour making the noise.

Well, you may have guessed that the person doing the oil change drained the gearbox and then "filled" the engine. Sure enough, I checked the dipstick and it was WAY overfilled. I told the owner that gear oil is cheap. Let's fill up the gearbox and see what happens. I drained the engine back to a proper level, filled the gearbox and ran the car on the lift. It was pretty normal sounding and all the gears seemed to work. I believe I drained the gearbox again and re-filled it. I took the car out on a road test and it shifted through all the gears pretty normally and it wasn't making any objectionable noises. I still wonder why the guy that did the "oil change" didn't look at the dipstick or, if he did, ignored the obvious message.

Anyway, the car went right back into rental service. It was doing well until some months later it caught fire and burned completely.