How to Change Your Car Oil

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Mark Blocker. In this segment, we're going to cover how to change your car oil. You're going to need an oil drain pan. You're going to need a wrench, or if you have the right size wrench, that works best, or you can use an adjustable wrench to remove the drain plug, and essentially, what we need to do, is remove the drain plug and the oil pan, and that's going to allow the old motor oil to drain out, and we'll catch it in this pan, and then we're going to replace it with new motor oil. I've got the vehicle jacked up. If you've got a truck, or something with higher clearance, you might not need to do this, but most smaller cars, you're going to need to raise the vehicle up, so you've got adequate space to get underneath there. Place the pan underneath here, and remove the drain plug. I'm just going to slide underneath, and I'm going to remove the drain plug real quick, and we'll let the motor oil drain out. You want to remember when changing your own oil, you want to have your vehicle at operating temperature. In other words, the engine thoroughly warmed up, take it for a short test drive, whatever it takes, just make sure that it's good and warm. That will thin down the oil, and that will allow it to drain out more quickly and thoroughly. After the oil stops dripping out of the oil pan, you can replace the plug in it. Make sure and tighten it down, and then we can add the engine oil. The engine oil is added in the valve cover. There should be a cap there, and it will have the engine oil indication on it, and what I've done, is just an inexpensive way of making a funnel, is just take an old oil container, and just slice it in half. You can slide that in there, and it makes for an easy way to dump it in. Just make sure you replace the proper amount of oil, that's required for your vehicle. This information can be found in the owner's manual. Generally, for a four cylinder engine, it's four quarts, and most other vehicles are five quarts, for standard automobiles. Trucks usually take a few quarts more. That information can be found inside your owner's manual, as well as the Viscosity rating that's recommended for the engine oil for your car, so that's how you change your car oil. Don't forget to change your filter as well."