|
The Maintenance Files |
| An oil change was first in line.
After reading the forum's about the quantity of oil involved, I was
prepared with a big ass bucket, paper towels & rags etc. And
the confidence of an oil change pro. Of course, bear in mind
that my hands have not touched dirty car oil in 25+ years (except for
an assist on my 323i BMW done by resident stepson).
Draining the oil tank was a piece of cake. Easy to access. Whiz bang. The filter was a piece of cake. Hey, you don't have to go under the car. Just how civilized is this? And then I went for the engine drain plug. Being the usual impatient idiot that I am, I positioned my oil bucket undid the bolt & sproing! WTF? Something shot into the hot oil. Hmmm. I undid what I thought was the drain & some unknown objects came out. This was not a good thing. I filtered the oil into bucket # 2 (don't forget bucket # 2!) and there were several mysterious parts that weren't found in the drain plug. Fraught with dread, I hit the books & the net. I mean, how can you mess up an oil change if you hope to seriously work on a car? I discovered that I had unwittingly taken off the bottom oil pressure release valve. See A in the illustration below.
It is found to the rear of the engine & is a 17mm down-facing plug. It's used to release oil when you first start, before the pressure builds or something. No biggie, though. I put it back together quite proud that I had found a new place to drain oil from. I then found the right drain plug. The bolt to the right (C above), is of course the right one. This time I miss-positioned the oil bucket & the initial stream ended up on the garage floor. It had to happen. I was expecting it & had lots of paper towels ready. Well, the garage floor needed a wash anyway but the driveway looks kind of embarrassing at the moment. My second oil change was done Oct 2005 at 65,545 miles with no incidents. |
