Bubblin' Crude

It's time for an oil change in the PedoVan again. I got kind of sick of paying $1000 at the dealer (granted I'd usually be getting something else taken care of at the same time, but still) so instead I just bought $150 of oil and decided to do it myself.

I technically only needed 13 quarts, but they only sell boxes of 6. It's kind of like a hot dogs vs buns thing, I guess.

Anyway, the first challenge is to reach the oil drain plug. It's gonna be a challenge to get under there but I think I might just be able to reach.

And with the plug removed, we drain the van of its precious life blood.

The oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.

While that's doing its thing, I also need to replace the oil filter. Obviously vans are very difficult to work on and this one is no different, just look at how tricky it is to reach the oil filter here!

The lengths I had to go to in order to access the oil filter housing was just astounding.

On the bright side, there's no finely ground bits of engine in here. The oil is very black, but that's par for the course with diesels: they get a lot of soot in the oil.

Did I mention that I had to buy a larger oil catch pan for this job?

The new one is... adequate. Just barely.

On the subject of new things, the new oil filter goes into place nice and easy, as do the fresh new o-rings.

And also on the subject of fresh new things, I naturally forgot to buy a new crush washer. Luckily copper can be annealed pretty easily with the application of some heat.

So from there it's just a simple matter of plugging up the holes and refilling the engine with 13 bottles of oil.

And cleaning up this mess, which was made all the messier by one of my government-issued oil recycling milk jugs having disintegrated and cracked all the way up one side, which I didn't notice until it was half way filled.

Thankfully I had the foresight to do all of the transferring in this tub, so it didn't turn into an Exxon Valdez moment. The tub, drain pans and so on got cleaned up pretty easily with oil dry and a bit of simple green, and now I just have to hope that the recycling guy drops off some containers in better shape for next time.