Change Your Oil in 10 Easy Steps

This weekend I decided to greatly reduce my time spent surfing the internet, a decision slightly influenced by the fact that our cable modem hasn’t worked since Thursday. Thank you Charter, great customer support. And the cable bill is lightly less than what one would pay a therapist for help with internet addiction. But I digress.

I really wanted to talk about car maintenance and (lack of) fashion today, and share the tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years for doing an oil change. Trust me, this is advice you won’t get anywhere else.

Step 1: Warm up the car and raise the front end slightly. I prefer driving up onto a pair of scrap 2x10’s left over from construction of the garage.

Step 2: Change into clothes that are so dirty and worn out you wouldn’t use them for rags. If you have long hair like me, wear a hat and tuck your hair up under it. Today I wore my purple and yellow Minnesota Vikings knit hat with the pom-pom on top that went out of fashion shortly after it was given to me in the third grade.

Step 3: Place a pan under the car and remove the drain plug. Let all the oil drain out and replace the plug. To prevent over-tightening, grab the wrench halfway up and only use a moderate amount of force. That way you’ll have much more leverage and strength available to loosen it next time.

Step 4: Realize you left the filter and oil in the house so it would be at room temperature and thus easier to pour than toothpaste. Make sure the coast is clear when walking from the garage to the house because you don’t want the neighbors to see you in an out-of-fashion Vikings hat. When you fail to do this, duck around the back side of the garage until they’ve finished driving by.

Step 5: Prefill the new filter about 1/3 of the way, put a trace of oil on the gasket. Move the drain pain under the old filter, clean up the oil that just sploshed onto the floor, then remove the old filter and install the new filter.

Step 6: Change the radio station because you can’t stand to listen to Katy Perry ever
since she started hanging out with that British guy that has worse hair than you. It doesn’t matter that you’re married and she’s half your age and not your type anyway, it still bothers you.

Step 7: Pour new oil into engine. Pour old oil into an empty gallon jug (washer fluid bottles work well). When you remember that your cold holds six quarts, get a second gallon jug and pour the remainder in there. Clean up the oil that overflowed from the first jug. This is easy if you put the jug into a cardboard box lined with newspapers before pouring in the old oil.

Step 8: Katy Perry on this station too? Change to classic rock. Decide that listening to “Mustang Sally” while working on a Mustang is corny, but tolerable.

Step 9: Wash up, change back into clean clothes. Start up car, drive off ramps, check for leaks, then shut off engine and verify oil level, which is really verifying that you could count to six when adding oil.

Step 10: Finish cleanup, don’t worry about getting the drain pan too clean because it’s just going to get more dirty oil in it next time. Write blog entry, and vow to get some better old clothes for next time.