In a bit of stupidity, last week I took our minivan into a local place to get the oil changed. I usually do the oil myself, but didn’t have a ton of time. We had received a coupon in the mail for Wash And Lube Time that included $5 off and they vacuumed the inside of the car as well. I figured that the price was good, we needed an oil change, and our van needed vacuuming anyway. Called, said they could get me in right now, went down there (as they’re very close to my house), got the oil changed, everything cleaned up, and the thing looks good.
The problem was that the car, all last week, was running with a lot more noise than usual, and making a lot of clicking noises. After doing a bit of research on DodgeTalk, we come to discover that if the car is running with crappy oil, then the engine will click really bad. So I figured that must be the issue, so I go and buy some good quality synthetic 5W-30 oil (as that’s what was recommended for the car), and get down underneath and get to work.
Now, I’ve changed the car in this a few times (we’ve only had the car a year) and in other cars about a thousand times. I’ve always been told that you can crank the drain bolt on really tight, but you’re only supposed to hand-tighten the oil-filter, otherwise the gasket won’t hold right and you’ll lose pressure. Whoever did this did it the exact opposite. I removed the drain bolt with just my hands (no wrench) and I had to literally destroy the oil filter to get it off. I couldn’t with my bare hands crank the thing at all, and it certainly didn’t help that it was a slick coated (not an easier-to-grip Fram filter), so I wouldn’t get a grip on the thing at all. Even wrapping my hands in tape didn’t help.
I had to go buy an oil filter wrench to fit this filter. I crawl back down there, cranked on it, and did nothing but crush and twist the oil filter. It got to the point where my oil filter wrench couldn’t grip it at all now without somebody holding the clamp in place while somebody else cranked it. So I called my brother in-law, I held, he cranked, and we finally got the stupid thing off there — and basically turned the oil filter into a cork-screw in the process. The gasket from the filter was still stuck to the mount, so I had to scrape that off as well (bad things happen when you put a filter on with the old gasket still on there — don’t ask me how I know that).
Got the new oil filter back on, got good oil put in there, started ‘er up, and, look at that, the click is gone (or at least mostly inaudible).
So consider this my future “note-to-self”: Don’t ever let somebody else do the oil, especially when they obviously didn’t know what they were doing. I could understand that filter being stuck like that if it had been a few months, but not after less than a week. So personally, coupons be damned, I’m avoiding Wash And Lube Time in the future (Sadly, even Wal-Mart’s lube center doesn’t screw that up).
Comments
Jake, that’s TERRIBLE! 🙁 I’m sorry to hear you went through all this. I’ve always had others do oil changes for me (being that I’m a girl, am not particularly mechanically oriented, have no desire to get OIL all over me (yuck!), don’t have the right equipment to collect & dispose of the oil, usually park my car outside which 8 months of the year is VERY cold, -AND- I’m always afraid of screwing it up) … but in (*counts on fingers*) over 15 years of owning cars, I’ve had oil changes done at either a local repair shop (local to wherever I lived @ the time), the local dealership (same price) or at the sole oil-change place, a Pennzoil quick lube. All of these joints have always done solid work, without fail. Now I ALMOST wish one of them had screwed it up so I could say, “Man, I hear ya!!!!” 🙂
Although, back in ’94 I did have a Ford Dealership tell me my oil pressure gauge was broken in the middle of a very hot summer. I was out on the interstate, it was late afternoon, and the engine didn’t sound funny on my ’93 Ranger or anything. I stopped in just to be safe though. Dad taught me well that way. 🙂 They assured me since it sounded fine, and there was plenty of oil in the truck, that all was fine.
1500 miles later the truck was making a screaming noise 🙁 🙁 🙁 and fortunately I was road-tripping w/ my Mom (we were moving all my sh*t back from college w/ our 2 trucks) and had company with me as I limped the final 60 miles to the nearest Ford Dealership (a different one). THANK GOD I had bought an extended warranty with the truck. Turns out the oil pump was DEAD, the gauge was fine (!!!) and I got a brand-new engine for… $52.50.
But it sucked not having my truck OR my stuff for over a week, it was @ a dealership over 3 hours away. That was a painful time……….
Major suckage, buddy. A tip I heard of a while ago for getting off stubborn oil filters is to punch a screwdriver all the way through it. It’ll be stuck in there pretty nicely and give you a LOT more leverage with which to turn it.
Jake,
I learned my lesson back in ’88, when I went to a “Quick Lube” place. The lube job went really fast, and I was happy. After driving about 3 blocks, my car overheated and made screaming sounds. I opened the hood, and checked stuff. I had ZERO oil. So, I drove back to the “Quick Lube” place, and told them I had no oil. Their excuse was….none. They were very sorry though. I’ve never been back to any “Quick Lube” place since that event.
Here’s mine –
Back in college I always took my car to the same place to get oil changed and routine type maintenance. Figured that way they’d have the records. During the oil change the guy comes in and suggests that I have the air filter changed as well since it was due. I said sure, and off he went. He came back in and told me that I didn’t have an air filter in my car. My car had been without an air filter for a year because they forgot to put it back in last time they were supposed to change it. Of course I had no way to proove that nobody else would have opened up the filter box, but I knew. Obviously haven’t been back since.
I had just driven my 1990 Acura Integra away from the Acura dealership with my friend driving behind me, when said friend called me to tell me that I was burning a LOT of oil. Apparently, I was trailing all sorts of white smoke and it wouldn’t let up at all. We took the car over to Friend’s house and checked the levels, which appeared to be a little high. We decided to drain it all and put back in what we needed. It turns out that the idjuts had forgotten to drain the old oil before putting in the new. We drained 9 quarts of oil out of an Acura Integra! Needless to say, I never went back there for service.
Another time, when I had a 1984 Mazda RX-7, I had Jiffy Lube change the oil. I drove away and wondered why on earth it was running so rough. I took it back to them and asked them to figure it out. They came back to me and showed me that my distributor cap had a post broken off of it. They had bumped the cap while getting in there dealing with the oil filter and had broken it, which caused one of the chambers (they’re not pistons so I don’t know what to call them) to misfire. They replaced the cap and all was well.
I have a 93 Acura Integra and went to change my oil. Where in the heck is it? Start with how far from oil pan and in what direction. Thanks,
I have also had a bear of a time getting oil filters installed by car companies off. My homemade solution for this, although it sounds a bit rough, is to make sure the filter is clean, wrap a few dozen rubber bands around it for grip, and it usually spins off with a little more effort than usual, but the increased grip helps quite a bit.
Yes, I’m cheap (no filter wrench), but I’m a college student. Gimme a break.
Dave