Last night I walked into my garage and found a small puddle of oil under my C4S. After getting under the car I see that the drain plug is damaged/scraped, but none of the surrounding pan has a mark on it.

Here's a crappy front iphone camera picture:



The is a magnetic LN drainplug that I installed last year. Has anyone else seen just their drain plug get scraped/hit?

The plug was also loose, which is why it was leaking. It's pretty much oil change time so I re-torqued the plug (it was much looser than 37 ft/lb) just to warm up the car, and am about to drive around the neighborhood and get it warm enough to change, while keeping steady eye on the pressure gauge.

Okay so now here is the odd thing. There is no other scrape/damage at all on the car. Last week I took the car to my local dealer for a windshield replacement, I found the leak the next day after not having driven the car.

Should I suspect the dealer did something to my car? Am I being paranoid? I have no memory of any scrape sound and the fact that nothing around the plug has any marks on it makes me paranoid.

Either way this is one order: https://www.suncoastparts.com/produc...=CarreraSSport

 

37 ft lbs is for the oem plug, i could have sworn the LN drain plug is around 20 ft lbs.....

 

You're memory is almost spot on - the LN magnetic plug should be torqued at 19 ft lbs. Here's the plug and you can see in the description the 19 ft lb reference.
https://www.suncoastparts.com/product/PKMAGNETIC.html

 

in that case could the extra torque shredded/damged the drain plug causing it to leak?

 

I was quoting the stock plug torque, was installed per LN instructions

 

Better pics, looks like the LN plug took a hit. Pretty tough little part.

Fortunately I have a spare, oil is drained and change will be complete with new plug, crush washer, etc

It sucks coming out and seeing a pool of oil under the car, but solving the issue feels good

 

Usually the extra torque strips the LN plug which then requires the use of a dremel to remove.

This looks like it was impacted during driving or at speed.

 

I would carefully look around for any other damage. The whole car underside and topside. Something happened that they did not tell you about. It could have come out at speed and cause a bad crash

 

or visit the dealership again and examine their parking lot for any of those silly speed bumps. You may find your answer there.

 

Yep. The dealer over torqued the drain plug once on my Cayenne and cracked it.

 

The usual case of "stripping" occurs with the hex fitting and not the plug threads. I've seen stripped plugs due to:

1) rounding the hex opening due to over-torque, or
2) rounding the hex opening due to using a torx bit instead of the 8mm hex bit

Strange that from OP's picture, it looks like only the plug was damaged.

 

Took my new to me car to the stealership for the 20k service, just to have it gone over by the experts" Gave me a very nice color laminated sheet of everything they would do to the vehicle, including an oil change - justifying the heft cost. OK

I knew one horn was inop because the mechanic immediately noticed it when they beeped the horn before backing into the bay at the PPI - my stealership missed it - made me wonder what else they missed. Stealership was very unhappy that I mentioned this to Porsche on a follow up questionnaire.

Last straw was when I changed the oil the next time - oil plug was way overtorqued and had a sharpie mark on the plug and the case. They just tightened the plug till the marks lined up WTF! I'm paying a premium for THIS?

Never went back. They recently changed ownership.

 

Actually, it's a common mechanic's practice to mark a torqued fastener and surrounding point with a Sharpie, especially those related to alignment settings, so it's easy to tell if a fastener has become loose or a setting changed. This is done on race cars all the time. At the next adjustment or change, they'll use alcohol to remove the sharpie marks then re-mark it, often in a different color. It actually sounds like you may have gotten one of the better techs working on your car.

 

I like that idea, I will go make a sharpie mark on my new plug that I installed and the bottom of the pan

To others who asked- I did inspect everything under the car, what was so strange is only the plug took a hit. The bottom of the sump is undamaged.

Looking forward to installing my engine protection plate when it arrives.

 

Possibly.

But the fact that it way way over torqued makes me think not. Also, when I called the shop they had no explanation.

Makes sense for the applications you mentioned.