How to Change Your Own Oil

Video Transcript

"We've raised the vehicle up on a lift but you could do the same thing by jacking the vehicle up with a floor jack. But always remember that safety first so make sure that you support the vehicle with jack stands, so that you can reduce the possibility of being injured or killed by a vehicle falling on top of you. In this case we have a, our mechanics drain pan is a roll on thing so we are able to lift up the drain so that we can get it closer to where the drain plug is. And I already selected the proper size wrench and we're going to loosen the drain plug and remove it. That's the little things where you've got to be kind of careful sometimes because it will have a tendency to come out and get you. While that's draining, one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to inspect the condition of the gasket on the drain plug. And I'm also going to take a good look at the condition of the threads. If the gasket or threads on the drain plug are worn you want to replace it before it in turn damages the oil pan. This is a lot cheaper to replace than an oil pan. Now that the oil has pretty much come to a drip, the oil pan's pretty much empty, we'll reinstall the oil drain plug and tighten it up. Our next step in the process is to replace the oil filter. What we're going to do is we're going to take this scrap wrench and we're going to reach up in here and slide it over the oil filter and turn the oil filter counter-clock-wise. Once I've turned it a little bit I can actually use my bare hands to turn the filter out of the way. Doing our best to catch the oil. Once we have that out of there the instructions on the oil filter suggest that we should actually clean off the surface where the new oil filter goes. The new oil filter, if you read the instructions on the filter itself, it suggests to clean up the mounting surface which we've done. It then tells us to lubricate the gasket, spin the filter on until it touches and then turn it an additional 3/4 of a turn. So what we'll do is I'll take a little bit of new motor oil, pour that on there. Then I take a little of that and actually lubricate the gasket. It's important to tighten the oil filter just the right amount. In this case I just made contact. Now I'll turn that an additional 3/4 of a turn. And that should be good. If we were to over tighten that it could actually squeeze out all the oil and either cause a leak or make it very difficult to change the next time. We've lowered the vehicle back down to the ground, removed the oil filler and installed a funnel. And then what we need to do is to refill the crank case with the proper quantity and grade of motor oil for the vehicle in question. So in this case I'm going to start filling the oil. When you're doing an oil change it's also a great idea to check all other fluids in the car too. Fluid levels, tire pressure, while you're doing all that and also do things like lubricate the chassis. This particular vehicle has no grease fittings but many do. Do that, let the funnel drain just a little bit. Remove that and don't forget to reinstall the oil filler cap. It could make quite a mess if you forget to put that back on."