2006 Toyota Tacoma V6. The oil filter is upside-down, between the battery and the plastic cover on top of the engine. The oil filter base has its own little tiny pan to catch what comes out when you remove the filter. And there is a second drain plug on the bottom of this little tiny pan. So you can drain 5 quarts out of your engine oil pan, then drain half-a-quart out of the oil filter base.
Ugghh, we have a mower like that.
And of course one day my SO jumped my ass in the backyard when she saw the mower upside down like that with me doing wierd things to it. Geez, I’ve NEVER done anything that looks wierd or dangerous or wrong without GOOD reasons…but thats a rant for another place.
1986 Toyota MR2.
The filter is between the engine and firewall–that’s a tight fit, you have to relax and do deep breathing exercises to enhance the pliability of your forearm. Then you climb up and lie down over the trunk, reaching into the engine compartment with your pythonesque limb. Grasp the filter without flexing any of the muscles in your forearm and curse. The filter is at a 45 degree angle with the hole pointing down. You can SEE it from the top, but you can’t loosen it from here. More deep breathing and a long steady pull will get your arm freed up. Climb off the back of the car and get another beer. Take some time with this so that the neighbors will grow bored and go back inside. Jack up the rear of the car and wiggle on underneath. Remember in your mind where the filter was as you reach up and around the catalytic converter and on past the exhaust manifold. Yup, there it is. Maybe you can loosen it with your bare hands, but probably not because it’s at a really awkward angle. But it comes off after another beer. And spills nasty old oil (it’s nasty and old because you keep putting off the oil change) all over the exhaust manifold and cat converter. There is no other way. I’ve tried putting a towel (one of the ex’s good ones because I was mad at her) around the exhaust components, but if you do that you can’t get at the filter. Trust me on this one. The car will smoke heavily for a couple hours as the oil burns off.
I bitched at a Toyota mechanic about this once. He endured me for a while then called over the guy who does their oil changes. Turns out the Toyota mechanics all have one guy who gets sent back to Japan for a special operation in which they snap the forearm and prevent it healing, thereby creating a second flexible universal arm joint. Very wily, eh?
All this talk makes me wonder…how good are those pumps that suck the oil out through the dipstick tube?
They probably work ok but the trouble seems to be removing the filter itself, not the oil, in most cases.
They work fine. I had a Ford Thunderbird that had the drain plug stripped so many times that no oversize plugs would seal so it was plugged with a rubber bung. Instead of dealing with it I just used one of those pumps to extract all the oil via the dipstick tube. Worked like a charm. Regarding the OP, getting to the filter on that car wasn’t too difficult.
They also make drain plugs that have a valve in them, so you don’t have to remove the plug. The better ones have enough of a nipple to slip a piece of hose over, and the lever is secured with a spring clip or cotter pin (or safety wire).
I drive a Toyota Corolla. The filter is on the bottom facing down, and I don’t even have to jack up the car to change the oil. I have to use an extension to reach it with the socket wrench. It’s generally easy to change the oil, but some always spills out when I remove the filter despite its location and even when I wait half an hour.
It isn’t the location of the filter that is the problem. Under the engine there is a big plastic splashguard. The engineers at Mazda, realizing that the guard would interfere with changing the oil filter decided to place an access hole in it for this purpose. I am assuming that if you have the 2.0L engine that the hole works splendidly, because on the 2.3L engine it is in the WRONG LOCATION. This means that you need to remove the guard, which is held in place by clips and screws which are designed to rust and break on contact after roughly one year of service. I think there were six of them. And when you call the Mazda parts counter to get these special connectors, they are sold individually for something like $4 each. The cowling itself is easy to break while removing it, and I am sure would cost anti to replace.
I just used a Dremel tool to elongate the existing hole to where you could reach the filter without removing the under cowling.
Not a spin on filter either, but a cartridge style, just so you have the chance to break the housing and be Fubar’ed. With a couple of o-rings to worry about replacing.
I now have a '12 Tacoma which has oil filter on top of engine upside down with special drainage setup for the filter (very sweet setup).
My husband reports that on the four-cylinder version of the mid-90s Mercury Mystique/Ford Contour, if one does not have a lift available, one has to remove a front wheel to access the oil filter.
My Mazdaspeed 3 has two problems. First it’s the cartridge type, mounted upside-down on the bottom of the engine. So while you’re on your back and unscrew the housing you get a bunch of oil down your hand/arm. The second problem is there is an engine guard (big piece of flat plastic under the front of the car) which has a nice convenient hole that could be used to get to the oil filter, but for some reason the hole is about 6" off where it should be. After taking the engine guard off for several oil changes and not trusting the flimsy fasteners to make it through another oil change, a dremel tool widened the hole and solved that problem.
Edit: LOL @ Chazzmans post, didn’t see it!
I used to have a Jeep CJ2A that was made right after WW2. As I remember, it had an oil bath filter that sat on a mount high up on the passenger side of the engine. Changing the filter meant removing a wing nut that held the canister cover in place, swapping out the old filter for the new one, replace the cover, and replace the wing nut. All in all, about 90 seconds, including time to chase down the wing nut when you dropped it.
I owned the vehicle for about 4 years, and never put 5 miles on it, so that was the only oil change I did on it.
Toss up between my SO’s former car, a 99 Sunfire in which the horizontally mounted oil filter is located between the firewall and engine, covered by wire harnesses and throttle cable which would always spew about a 1/2 litre of oil over the tranny and engine or my current ride, an 07 Subaru Legacy where the engineers thoughtfully made the oil filter vertically mounted on the bottom of the engine; surrounded by the exhaust manifold. Oh, and it has a tendency to seep oil occasionally because where the seal meets the block is iffy depending on the filter you use. The filter they call for is also tiny, and brutally hard to get a grip on.
Best oil filter location ever was my 92 Cherokee. Mid mounted vertically upside down. When you drained the pan, it drained the the filter. 30 second swap, no mess, if the filter wasn’t cranked on.
'87 Nissan Pathfinder had a side mount horizontal filter. You could get to it, cranking 1/4" at a time before re-setting the filter wrench. Then you dump a pint of oil down the engine bay while removing it.
Even better though - the 4 cylinder and the 6 cylinder versions used different filters. However, each filter would thread onto both engines - the gasket was just in a different place (outer ring on one, inner ring on the other). If you grabbed the wrong filter - it would thread on nicely, and then when you started the engine you would start streaming oil.
Yeah - that was nice.
I was going to quickie lube places once I was in LA apartment living. Each time I would tell them that I had a the 4 cylinder car and to make sure that they used the right filter. I would get the “we know what we are doing” glare. I got into the habit of idling in the parking lot for 3 minutes to make sure that they did it right, and 1/5 of the time they put the wrong filter in (apparently I am on of the only people who bought the 4 cylinder version).
As I have an '08 XR and know what you are talking about I can well reply to that!
That is why you crack the filter loose from the bottom with either a long sleeve shirt on or rag between you and the converter then go up top and spin the filter off from the top…
:smack:
I would imagine that answer was a joke for you must well know that is how you change motor oils for at normal operating temperatures the sediment and crap that settles to the bottom of the oil pan when the engine is not active gets mixed up in the oil once more and thus when you drain the oil, when the engine is at operating temps, the sediment and such can be correctly removed with the draining of the oils… :smack:
That filter location was actually good. You refer to the Saturn 1.9 which had been around, in EVERY Saturn S, from 91-2002 until they stopped making the S for the 2002 car year.
You would either remove the filter from below or turn the wheels all the way to the left and then remove the filter. Either way you would place a rag under the filter so that when removing the filter the rag would catch the oil. :smack:
You are either insane or do not know the Aura he is referring to!
First of all most every newer GMs, for years now, are recommended to be at a 5w30 (no more no less).
A 20 weight oil is too thin for the tolerances of most modern GM engines.
Second the Aura being Referred to is a XR for it has the 3.6 in it and that is the sporty
version of the Aura that does 0-60 in 5.8 seconds (The 3.6 formerly was used first in a Cadillac)
On the Cavalier that I mentioned up thread, I think you could access the filter by removing the passenger front tire. This was the car that made me give up changing my own oil. It was just too much of a PITA to get under it, it was so low to the ground. I recall having to turn my head, push myself under it and the look up again and I wasn’t comfortable with that. If something were to happen…spill hot oil on myself, drop a tool on my face, the car shifts, whatever, I just wouldn’t be able to move fast enough. I did it with jacks/jackstands a few times but it got old quick. It was just easier to take it in to the quicklube place and let them do it for twenty bucks. Too much hassle for a savings of, what, $5.
They do a bad job, but at least I wasn’t crawling under my car anymore. And that’s first hand experience, multiple times, catching mistakes, not ‘I heard they do a bad job’.
gsregal2 Do not insult posters in this forum. Criticize the idea, not the poster.
No warning given.