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DIY Oil Change How To:

So! You want to change your oil. This is daunting, but it’s not the scariest thing you could do.

Here’s some pictures of the process, along with some advice:

So, this is what I needed to do the job. A Jack, jackstand, (some cars are going to require two, but I can get away with only using one on Ichigo because Nissan engineers love me and want me to be happy), an oil filter that fits your car, enough oil for your car, a funnel, an oil filter wrench, and a wrench to remove the oil plug as well as any trim pieces that happen to be in the way. (Not pictured) are gloves and rags.

Chalk the back wheel, put up the parking brake, put the car in park, and jack up the passenger side tire.

Before you drain the oil, make sure you loosen the oil cap (leaving it on, but with a little access to air open) in order to make sure you don’t create .a vacuum that holds in oil.

That conspicuously clean spot is where mechanics clean before taking out the drain plug, and the plug is obvious when you know that.

Loosen the nut until it’s hand tight, then, pushing the plug in against the oil, unscrew. Despite looking suspiciously like chocolate milk, upon further investigation the two share very few basic properties.

The car’s ability to continue requires that the drain plug can cleanly be removed and put back (Frankie bumped into this not working when we tried to change Jeremiah’s oil recently.) So when it’s pulled out, it makes sense to wipe off any built-up grime and dirt in the threads and in the head.

That’s the old oil filter. Notice that there are plastic undercarriage shields in the way. Get them out of the way by removing a few bolts (this car has literally four bolt sizes outside of the 21mm wheel lug nuts and the axle nuts, it’s like lego built it) as removing the oil filter will often result in oil spilling everywhere, but do remember to put these back as they are designed to stop rocks from ripping through the car’s engine bay.

New filter! These aren’t the super fancy filters and you know what? That’s perfectly fine for this engine. Don’t buy into the “oh, it’s twice as much because it’s twice as good for your engine” crap. The nicer, higher end filters are only necessary if your engine is set up for serious performance. Your daily? Put on what fits with your car, your oil choice, and what saves you money and change it when you change your oil. The only remotely tempting option in terms of the higher end models is the K&N high end filter and that’s entirely because it has a nut welded on the top which … come to think of it, why don’t manufacturers just do that? But even that is a bit of a rip unless you have a performance engine, as there won’t be an increase in the filtration and it’s not like your engine will be “extra clean” with the better filter.

I’m using O’Reilly high mileage for two reasons. One, because it was on sale and I’m about as cheap as the soundtrack of nine hungry birds nests and two, because high mileage motor oil is actually an improvement, the formulation helps to break up crud in the oil system and (more importantly to me) old cars have seals fail a lot, in a slow annoying way that lets oil in a little bit at a time to ruin through cracks that grow worse, and high mileage oil has an additive that reduces that drastically.

The seal of the oil filter needs to have a bit of oil attached to it. This does a few things - the oil helps the rubber create a proper seal for the filter, which makes sure that oil doesn’t leak, and it also makes sure the rubber doesn’t crack and eventually either badly leak or worse.

New oil filter installed. Don’t forget to wipe up any spilled oil.

Then, pour in the oil! Use oil that’s appropriate to your engine, in this case 5W30 is appropriate. We’re picking a high mileage synthetic/traditional blend, but there are plenty of reasons to go either full synthetic or with a straight traditional oil.

And there we are! Button everything up and you have your oil changed. Make sure you don't overtighten the oil plug, it should be more then hand tight but not by much. Hope that was informative!

- Amy

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Projects Update:

Hey guys! A couple of things have happened to change the state of the projects. Ichigo is now a shared car, and I've put a fair amount of the money originally aimed at Wabi-Sabi into fixing her so she could stay on the road and Uber. Wabi-Sabi is looking like it is going to be a winter project. I'm going to pick something up that's fun to work on, that we can give a lot of character to, and that we don't mind being on the rat rod/rolling art side of the spectrum. I'll be posting about the cars I'm thinking about for Wabi-Sabi now, and I'll keep posting about the upgrades we're doing to Ichigo. Up next is refitting the front bumper, painting it, and fitting back up sensors. - Amy

#project cars #projects #amy #project wabi sabi #project ichigo

Amateur brake job done on Ichigo. New rotors and pads. She gets used as an Uber vehicle and that ends up meaning a LOT of abuse on the brakes. There's a couple bolts on the back that were the devil's own job to get loose but other then that the job went swimmingly. Took longer then I expected, certainly, especially including running back to O'reilly's after they had given me the pads for the wrong Versa. Also, you can see we've added a couple stickers and done some minor bodywork repairs to get her to normal. Next post I'll talk about her new bumper and fog lights, and talk about her new infotainment setup.

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