How To Change Your Engine Oil

The goal of these instructions is to guide you through the process of changing your motor oil.

Some details such as filter location and drain bolt location may vary from automobile to automobile.

This tutorial is organized into six steps. These steps have been described through years of my own experience and from calling upon the combined experience of friends and other sources of advice over the years. After following these simply steps anyone with basic hand tool skills will be able to successfully change their own oil whenever needed.

Step 1 1: Gather Supplies

The first step of any job worth doing is the gathering of the necessary supplies. Fortunately, this job is rather simple and the list of needs is a short list.

• Fresh oil
• Fresh oil Filter
• Oil Filter Wrench
• Wrench for Oil Drain Bolt
• Oil Drain Pan
• Clean-Up Supplies for spilt oil


To begin with, new oil will be needed. Oil brand can be chosen by personal preference and oil grade should be chosen as recommended by the automobile’s user’s manual. A new oil filter will also be needed. Again the oil filter brand can be chosen by personal preference. I would recommend a filter that has been designed to be tightened by hand (one that has a coarse or grip-able body) otherwise you may require an oil filter wrench also. If an oil filter wrench is unavailable you may be able to use a large pipe wrench, or a pair of channel lock pliers, if this is the case be extremely careful not to crush the body of the filter. You will also need the appropriate size wrench for the oil drain bolt and an oil pan to catch the old oil while draining. You may also require some paper towels and oil drying mix to clean any spilt oil.

Comments

[aristide202]

you can find better magnets from disassembling a worn hard disk. Pour some fresh oil from above before closing the drain bolt , I use a huge syringe and a silicon pipe, and you will see some more gunk coming out

[amclaussen]

SORRY, but I would NOT do it that way...
If you really want to perform the best oil change procedure, you plan on changing the oil after a trip returning to home, thus the oil will be at operating temperature and its viscosity will be quite lower than at ambient temperature, which will facilitate an almost complete drain from the engine, removing the most contaminants along with it. Operating temperature needs at least a 20 minute engine operation, then it is best to plan ahead and take advantage of doing some driving instead of only running the engine stationary and polluting the air needlessly! Reaching operating temperature means that all the engine is throughly heated and that almost ALL of the used oil will drain to the pan in a matter of minutes. You would be surprised to find that more than half of a quart of dirty oil is still adhered to the engine internals when the oil is at room temperature instead of througly warmed. I have dissassembled engines that were not drained at running temp, to find many table spoons of cold oil attached to the inside of the pan, forming a dirty mess.

As I own TWO turbocharged cars, and the turbochargers have very small and extremely hot oil passages, I use an oil cleaning fluid that helps to get the inside of the engine very clean and also facilitate the draining, because it lowers the viscosity an extra amount, so that the used oil comes out faster and more completely than only draining it. This product is called "Oil system Cleaner" by WYNN'S; but there are others similar. This comes in a small violet colored bottle and is added to the USED oil five minutes before draining, with the engine running at fast idle and without driving or subjecting the engine to any load, just fast idling around 1,200 to 1,500 RPM's, to best clean all the engine internal parts. Complete draining can be achieved by waiting with the plug removed only 15 minutes instead of two or more hours by using the Oil System Cleaner. You will notice that the used oil comes out looking darker when using this product because it contains some detergents and helps to remove some carbon deposits. Engine wear is avoided because the cleaner contains some extreme pressure additives, so it has shown to me that it is completely safe to use, as long as you don't load the engine or rev it above fast idle. I've followed this routine for many years and have complete confidence in its advantages over the quick and careless standard oil change procedure followed at most oil change places, while saving enought to buy the oil cleaner and the best quality synthetic motor oil and best made oil filters for my cars. Another Tip: on some cars, the original oil filter is quite small, so that you can easily find a LARGER filter that will have the same base and still fit in the available space... therefore you will be able to put 6 instead of 5 quarts of oil or so, which will permit to extend the oil change interval accordingly and save some oil changes along the years. If your car hasn't an oil plug magnet, you can install a strong speaker magnet to the underside or the side of the oil pan with high temp epoxy (like those with steel or aluminum dust load), to better catch any magnetic particles riding on the oil.

Following these guidelines, the interior of my engines have been kept as pristine and clean as the best racing engine teams have theirs, after several years and in time to rebuild, my friends have been surprised by looking how clean my oil pan comes out, copared the theirs! Best luck, amclaussen.

[DarkStarPDX]

Secretly, I was hoping that this Instructable would consist of two steps: 1) Buy electric car. 2) No more changing motor oil. Seriously though, it's really nice seeing Instructables like these that describe everyday processes. Hopefully it encourages people to stop paying too much to have a shop change their oil for them. You're next one should be on rotating the tires since that should usually be done at the same time as an oil change.

[Kiteman]

Step 4: most drainplugs are already magnetised.

[DarkStarPDX]

Hmm... I've never had a car with a magnetized drain plug. They've all had separate magnets in the bottom of the oil pan that I've cleaned up whenever I've replaced the pan gasket.