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.

A (not so) Sticky Situation

Blog Reboot! It’s time to get off my duff and start doing things. Yes, I do realize that writing a blog does involve sitting on one's duff. Please don’t distract me with such details.

Today I decided to do something after work that did not involve sitting. Not sure exactly what that was, I went straight into the basement and found a box of, um, “crap”, that was rescued from dad’s workshop. First thing on top of the box was a roll of adhesive pipe insulating tape. Great! Our hot water pipes could use some insulation against the cold basement. Should make for slightly warmer showers.

So, in a manner totally uncharacteristic of somebody so fond of procrastination, I instantly got out the stepstool and proceeded to start wrapping a pipe. Okay, there’s a little bit of technique to this. It seems to be going on a bit lumpy, and it isn’t sticking all that well. Better get the package and double check the directions. Hey look, the price tag is from Bradlee’s. Didn’t they go out of business 20 years ago? Actually they went bankrupt in 2000, according to Wikipedia, but judging from the packaging and the price ($1.50), this is old stuff.

What we’re dealing with here is some ancient adhesive that lost its stickiness probably around the time Reagan left office. Acutally, if I Google “mortell pipe insulation”, the most recent reference I can easify find is in the May 1977 issue of Popular Mechanics. Hello Jimmy Carter!

Thus, initiative was shown, a valiant attempt was made at putting something to use. But in the end, it will take too much effort for a sub-standard result. If I really want my pipes insulated, there’s better and easier alternatives available today. As much as I hate waste (and I do hate it in neurotic proportions), I’m gonna have to convince myself that chucking this stuff is the right thing to do.