Engine Damage - Run with Oil light showing for 2 minutes

[Rodge]

Sad little drama last night with my Daughter's car which is a mid-late 90's Nissan Pressia import. She had it serviced last week and to cut a long story short it appears the mechanic didn't tighten the sump plug up properly because she got caught on the motorway in rush hour traffic and the oil light came on. Perhaps she should have known better, (that's a seperate debateable point, lets not go there) but she kept driving to the next off ramp about 2 minutes away and pulled off and parked up. I organised a tow truck to get the vehicle back to her flat and the operator noticed the sump plug was missing.

Today, to their credit to date, the mechanic has organised a tow truck at their expense to uplift the car to their workshop, fitted a new sump plug and new oil, reimbursed her for the tow truck recovery last night and supplied her with a second hand tyre as a sorry as one of her tyres was a fair bit worn, all at their expense of course.

My question is, and I've just got off the phone with her asking the same thing, has any engine damage been done ? Thoughts ?

My pondering on this, this morning has revolved around the fact that it takes quite a few minutes for all the oil to drain out when one removes the sump plug so there was some oil still flowing round in there coating the bearings and such like.

Talked this over with my engineer friend this morning and he reckoned my daughter and her boyfriend are probably the best equipped to figure if there's any apparent damage. He advised they go down there together and both have a good listen to the engine, if it feels, sounds or drives rough then there's a problem. I'll go and have a listen after work today. He thinks a lot depends upon the quality of the oil that was in the engine, dunno, remaining lubricity ability with only some remaining oil in the engine, I'm shrugging my shoulders, no idea really...he doesn't seem to know either.

The grey area as its quite an old engine appears to be if there an engine failure quite some months down the track or high oil consumption, there could be questions about what's caused it.

What to do ? Compression test, would that show anything up ?
Used oil analysis in a couple of months time ? But with no previous oil analysis history on the engine who's to say what might have caused this for instance a high iron reading...the age of the engine or what happenned last night ?

Obviously this incident can't have done the engine any good, but proving any possible future subsequent failure was as a result of this, that's another thing. Doesn't seem like much point bringing in the lawyers as at $300 plus an hour they would soon chew up the value of the car which is probably less than $3,000 anyway and there might not even be a problem ???

Anyone got any thoughts they would care to share ? I'm a bit stumped for ideas other than what my engineer friend suggested. Is there anything practical and inexpensive I can do or is this just a case of letting this play out and seeing what happens ?