Advice on Basic Car Maintenance?

Factual Questions
21

This is good advice. The notion that viscous oils (e.g. 20w50) are superior is common, but dubious. The owner’s manual’s recommendations are the way to go.

You can give yourself a virtuous feeling by decreasing the oil change interval somewhat. But you probably aren’t going to derive great benefit from this.

Probably the best way to get started is to find a car-savvy friend who will show you the way. Saying “I’m new to car maintenance and feel I could use some guidance from an expert like you.” should produce the desired result.

22

I’m going to disagree with the others a bit. If you don’t change the oil often enough I don’t see where it will really cause that much damage. Sure the oil will get a bit dirtier, and supposedly this causes extra wear and tear on some engine parts, but as long as the oil maintains a reasonable viscosity then I can’t see where it’s really going to hurt much.

On the other hand, if your engine burns oil or has a small leak, then you could really get yourself into trouble. If you don’t have enough oil in the engine then all the mechanical parts are going to start scraping together with rather disasterous results. The first thing to go will probably be the rings. You’ll notice that the car burns oil, since it will get past the rings and will make black smoke come out the tail pipe, and the gas mileage of the car will drop. Slowly but surely the engine will be ruined from the inside out.

By the time the idiot light comes on in most cars, the oil pressure is already far too low and a lot of damage has already been done.

The “professional tool” (an oil filter wrench) will cost you all of 5 bucks at the local auto parts store. Some people will just stab the old oil filter with a screwdriver then use the screwdriver’s handle to torque the thing off, but I wouldn’t recommend that.

An oil change is about the simplest thing you can do on a car, other than changing a tire. Get yourself one of those containers from the auto parts store that the oil can drip into, then you just close the cover up and take it to the oil recycler, undo the little cap, and pour it out. Depending on your car, you may need to jack it up to get to the oil drain plug. If you do jack the car up, NEVER EVER get underneath a car with only a jack holding it up. Get a couple of jack stands and make sure the car is supported by the jack stands (plus the jack) before you go underneath it. Remove the oil fill cap at the top of the engine, then loosen the drain plug at the bottom of the engine. Make sure you use the proper size wrench so you don’t strip the bolt head. Wait until all of the oil drains out into your container, then put the drain plug back in. Remove the old oil filter. On some cars the oil filter is really difficult to reach, but then they give you a removable panel inside the wheel well that you can use to get it out. Take a little bit of new oil and lightly coat both sides of the gasket on the new oil filter so that it will make a nice seal, then put the new oil filter on. Tighten it “hand tight” (as tight as you can get it without using any tools). Put in the new oil, make sure you put the fill cap back on, and you’re done. Get into the habit of double checking to make sure you put everything back in place. My wife stopped at a gas station and they said she was low on oil, then proceeded to forget to put the fill cap back on after they added a quart. :smack:

Most areas have some sort of oil recycling set up. Where I live now there are a handful of shops where you can dump the old oil. Where I used to live, you could just take it to the city dump. They had a tank set up just inside the gate where you could dump the oil for recycling.

Personally, I would recommend learning to change your own oil. Not only are you saving yourself money, but you are making sure the job is done right. Those awful quick lube places don’t even bother to take out the drain plug. They just suck out the old oil from the top with a suction, which probably leaves a bunch of old gunk and dirty oil at the bottom of the engine. If you do choose to have a mechanic do it for you, at least take it to a decent mechanic and not a quick lube place.

23

This is misleading and possibly expensive advice.
Over the years engines have gotten smaller, more powerful, and much more high tech. They also run hotter, and recommended oil change intervals have gotten longer.
Skip an oil change to two on a turbo charged car and you could well be out $1000 for a new turbo. Notice I said you will be out, since you did not follow the maintenance schedule, the warranty is void. :eek:
Also in these days of overhead cams and variable valve timing, there are many small oil passages that can get easily clogged if oil change intervals are stretched beyond what the factory recommends. This is called coking.
I have seen two cases in the past month were customer’s stretched the oil changes on their cars a couple of times. Instead of all the changes being at 7,500 miles (factory interval) they had most at 7,500, a few at about 8,000 and a couple at 8,500ish. The result? The piston rings were starting to stick in the ring lands when cold causing combustion pressure to enter the crankcase and blow the seals out of the font of the engine. Luckily, both cases were caught early enough that it was possible to remedy the problem without a tear down. But if the rear main seal had blown instead of a front seal, it would have been over 12 hours labor to replace. :smack:

I’m guessing that you have never tried to remove a filter that some idiot installed using that $5 wrench. :slight_smile: The last time I had a customer install his filter with a wrench it took me, and all of my tools, about 45 minutes to remove all the pieces of the filter from the engine. It says hand tighten on the side of the filter for a reason people.

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This assumes that someone who knows nothing about working on cars can do a better job that someone who does oil changes for a living. Why do I doubt this?
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While I am no fan of Iffy lubes and the like, I need a cite for this assertion that the oil is removed from the top. Every quick lube I have been near has a pit were one guy drains the oil from below while another does the work above. Why dig a pit if you are going to suck it out the top?

Alright Bibliovore here is the deal. You are buying a book for 15 or 20,000 dollars. With that book comes a free car. :smiley: That book is the owners manual. It will tell you most, if not everything you will need to know about your car and taking care of it. Yet most people never read this most expensive book they have ever bought, they just drive the free car that came with it.
READ THE OWNERS MANUAL (sorry I didn’t mean to shout)
Inside the manual is the service schedule, and as Gary T pointed out there are actually two regular and severe. If you live in the middle of nowhere, and drive gently feel free to use the regular schedule, if you live where you deal with traffic, drive hard or is a warm climate go with the extreme schedule.
In either event these schedules are a dead nuts minimums. As in never to be exceeded. Feel free to change the oil more often, never less.
My personal suggestion is that if you want to go with a more often schedule every 5,000 miles is a very good way to do it, because everybody can count by 5’s.
But bottom line the guys that know the most about your engine are the guys that work for the people that wrote the owners manual. Their opinion should carry way more weight that any suggestions you get on a message board.

24

Oh yeah I almost forgot use the grade of oil that the owners manual recommends for the tempeture range you are driving in.

25

The screwdriver trick has never once worked in the 3 or 4 times I’ve seen it tried. I even tried it once - once. It shredded the filter, and left the core on. Tried lock-grips, warming gently with a torch, etc. Finally, I borrowed a universal chain-link wrench and was able to have a friend put torque on the shredded filter threads, whilst I took a hammer and punch and “walked” the filter threads around for a quarter turn. If that hadn’t worked, I would have got out the Dremel and started a long and sad process. As it was, it took 2 hours. Yee haw.

26

I watched a friend of mine stab an oil filter with a screwdriver twice (on 2 different cars). On both occasions it came right off. On the first occasion no one nearby happened to have a filter wrench. On the second occasion he was just impatient while I was looking for mine.

I’ve never been willing to try it on one of my cars.

I agree. I’m not actually advising anyone to go a little long between oil changes. All I’m saying is that I can’t see what harm it does. I would be glad to see some hard data about what damage is actually done. I’ve known a lot of people to go long between changes with no damage at all to their engines that I could see. The examples you posted seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

I don’t go to those sorts of places. I’ve heard that they do this from numerous sources, but the only one I can quote off the top of my head is Car Talk. I don’t know if they archive their calls, but there was one call earlier this year where the basic problem was that the car was overfilled with oil. Click and Clack explained that they use suction these days instead of draining it, and that the guy probably hadn’t placed the suction tube all the way at the bottom of the engine (plus they made a bunch of jokes about leaving half of the old oil in there and charging you for all new oil, in typical Car Talk humor). I got the impression from that show that most of the lube places were doing it that way now, but I have no idea if this is true nationwide or not.

A professional mechanic forgot to put oil in my father in law’s engine, with the results that you’d expect. He thought gee this thing sounds a little funny, but by the time he pulled over the engine was toast.

A professional mechanic at a tire shop cross threaded the lug nut and drove it in with an air hammer, completely ruining the stud.

I don’t have any formal mechanical training at all, but I’ve never screwed up an oil change or a tire change yet.

It’s not a question of skill, it’s a question of how much time and effort do you have to devote to the job. Oil changes are so simple that I think too many mechanics (especially in larger cities) don’t put in the required time and effort to do the job right. If you do it yourself, you don’t have a shop manager breathing down your neck to get the car out of the bay and you also aren’t working on four other things at once.

27

Gary T, you were right on a couple points, I guess I should reveiw my replies before posting, hehehe.

the air filter and bearings were something else I was thinking of, it would be a terrible waste of money to perform those two as often as I suggested.

Though two I will defend.

I have yet to see any recommendation for an oil change exceeding 4k miles. If there were I’d stick with 3k anyway since it’s so cheap. The change isn’t for viscosity reasons. It’s because the dirt that works it’s way under the piston rings (and always some does), is what damages the valves, lifters, piston rod connectors, injector ports, etc.

Also, the fuel filter ( I should have included the pump maybe) are usually in the gas tank. While the parts are cheap enough, you have to be experienced in not blowing yourself up to remove the tank. Granted, either way you’re paying for the service, but whether at 5 years or 10, would you rather do it on your schedule or after waiting an hour for a tow truck to drop you off at a closed service station so you can call a cab to take you to a hotel?

BTW, 'You" isn’t Gary T, just trying to make a point.

(Waits patiently to lambasted) :wink:

28

Well, then here it is… :slight_smile:

Volkswagen maintenance schedule

Notice that not all engines have the same oil change interval.

1.8L and 2.8 V6 both have a 5k mile oil change interval.

2.0L, TDI and VR6 all have 10k mile oil change intervals.

29

Happy to oblige. :smiley:

While the overwhelming majority of modern cars have the fuel pump in the tank, only a handful have the filter in the tank. Now, all cars with the pump in the tank have a type of filter, called a strainer, in there on the pump pick-up tube, but virtually all also have a “regular” filter along the fuel line, outside the tank. Some recommend fuel filter replacement at 30,000 miles, some at 60,000 miles, and some don’t mention it at all. I believe it’s wise to replace the fuel filter by 60,000 miles if it’s not listed.

In those cases where the only filter is in the tank, I agree it’s not a regular service item. Replacing it, along with the fuel pump, at 10 years would not be a bad idea.

30

I’d like to ask for a cite on that point, as I’ve been following a 20W50 regimen for many years, on the advice of some engineering friends, in fleet administration positions. I’ll email them and post findings to this thread. Thanks.

31

You’ve been lucky, or you’ve had engines that are compatible with 20w50. I don’t have cites that you can access without being a member of the International Auto Technicians Network, but I can assure that my 30 years of professional auto repair experience and the experience of many of my colleagues has shown us numerous cases of engines that suffered premature wear from using a higher viscosity oil than recomended. Your experience may be valid for you, but I have to maintain that it is not good advice for everybody.

32

A number of years ago, my company noticed a higher than normal internal engine failure rate at some, and only some dealers.
Investagation showed that the dealers with the higher than normal failure also were using 20W-50 instead of the recomonded (15W-40) weight of oil.
We got the dealers in question to change their oil to the correct grade, and the failure rate fell into line.

I posted it before in this thread, and I will post it again. danceswithcats the guys that designed and built the engine know more about it than your freinds do. The recomondation of the guys that designed the engine should carry way more weight that any suggestions you get on a message board (or from your friends).
The factory recomondations are in the owners manual. Read it, learn it love it.