Love your car? Of course you do! It is an investment and you want only the best things for your car to make it more reliable for years.
If you do love your car, the first thing that should pop up into your mind is to give your car proper engine maintenance. After all, your car’s engine is the heart and soul of your vehicle. A stalling engine won’t get you anywhere!
So how to keep your car’s engine in tip top shape? Simple! You have to prioritize engine oil change for your car REGULARLY.
What is the Role of Engine Oil?
Well, engine oil helps lubricate all the components inside your car’s engine. This include pistons, connecting rod, crankshaft, piston rings, and more.
A quality “synthetic” oil can give your engine better lubrication so it gets better protection for wear and tear. Conventional or what they call “mineral” oils are good for your engine for a limited time short mileage only, and not ideal for new engines.
Due to excessive workload inside the engine, oils even those synthetic ones become dirty or black overtime. This is commonly called as “gunk” or soot, a chocolate-like sludge that sticks into engine components.
So if you don’t change your engine oil on time, sludge and soot will eat up your engine slowly and surely, making your engine’s metal parts to become irreparable.
Engine oils also varies in viscosity. Some oils have a rating of SAE30 or SAE40. Some have dual ratings like 0W40 (Wmeans winter), 5w30 or 15w40.
These viscosity ratings are made to fit every car engine’s specifications, especially those who lives in cold weather. So you have to check first your car engine’s viscosity rating too before you buy your oil.
How to Change Engine Oil of Your Car?
Now this must be a trivial question for you especially if you already knew how to change oil. Though this post is designed for beginners, I do believe that seasoned mechanics can still learn from this post.
So I am going to show you a step by step guide on how to “properly” change your engine oil.
First off, all makes and models have similar way of changing engine oils, though there are car manufacturers that creates an engine bay designed to make it difficult for people to perform DIY change oil.
So whether you have a petrol or diesel engine, an SUV, truck or a sedan, all have the same procedures on how to change engine oil.
Here are the tools that you need:
- Your car’s preferred engine oil
- Your engine’s oil filter brand
- Crocodile jack
- Jack stands
- Funnel
- Mechanics gloves
- Polycarbonate glasses
- Oil filter wrench
- Socket wrench set
- Bungee cord
- Screw drivers
- Oil drip pan
Jack the Car Up
So the first thing that you should do is to use your car’s jack and lift the car on the right height where you will be able to go under and reach for your engine’s oil drain bolt.
To do this, you first have to put a piece of stone or rock on your rear wheel to keep the car stable while you jack the car. Also, engage your car’s e-break can give your car additional safety and stability.
Next, using your car’s own jacking tool, lift your car to the right height, high enough to get yourself under the engine and work beneath your engine compartment.
In most cases, your engine is likely protected with a stone guard or skid plate. If so, you have to use your wrenches to get that metal out of the oil drain bolt’s way.
Find the Drain Bolt and Drain the Old Oil
The drain bolt is directly beneath your car’s engine. You will learn that it is very easy to find.
Once you found the drain bolt, you need to use your wrench to open that bolt and start draining the old oil.
You may find the bolt to be a tight stubborn nut. So you also have to grab an extension bar for your wrench to get more leverage when opening your engine’s oil drain bolt.
Now once you cracked open the bolt, put your drain pan beneath the bolt so that the oil will go directly to the pan, not on the ground of your garage.
Be patient on draining your old oil. Some folks let their oil drain overnight to completely take out the old oil. Some auto shops use air compressor to push the old oil out, which is one of the quickest way to do it.
Depending on your engine’s capacity, you can get 5 to 7 liters of oil from your engine. Just make sure not to spill the oil anywhere you want. Be responsible when it comes to oil disposal as it can make huge damage on the environment if not disposed properly.
Now close the bolt and start working on the engine bay.
Find the Oil Filter and Replace it With the New One
After you drained all the oil out, it is time to change your oil filter.
Now oil filters have different sizes depending on your engine. So it is important that you check your service manual and see which oil filter is the right fit for your engine.
The placement of your filter on your engine also varies. Some filters are easily found on top of the engine, and some are on the side.
What makes it difficult to change oil filters are hoses and cable lines that comes in its way, which you should take out first before you can reach for the filter.
Now if you have clear path to the filter, all you need to do is to open it by turning clockwise. You may need an oil filter wrench to take out the filter.
And there are some pretty weird types of filter wrench that are available in the market. The most commonly used is the chain type wrench which is an adjustable type that can fit in almost all types of filters.
Once you take out the old filter, take note that there are still oil inside the filter. You may now install the new oil filter as instructed in your service manual.
Now Open the Engine Cap and Pour the Fresh New Oil
After you place the new oil filter, then it’s time to pour in your new engine oil.
As I mentioned above, it is advisable to use an engine oil that is specifically designed for your engine, so look at your service manual for that. Otherwise, I advise you to use only synthetic oil for your engine. And don’t use any flushing oil (I will explain why on my next post).
Depending on your engine’s capacity, don’t over fill your engine with too much oil. Too much oil will create too much pressure and will damage your piston rings and other engine components. Plus, you also lose power when you have too much oil. So fill only to the recommended amount.
After that, close the engine cap, return the hoses that you pulled out (if there’s any) and place the skid plate back beneath the engine bay.
And you have successfully changed the oil of your engine! If this helps you a lot, please subscribe to my Youtube Channel found on the link below.
Till next time!
