Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 06:44:49 -0700
Reply-To: Tom Young <tomyoung1@COMCAST.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Tom Young <tomyoung1@COMCAST.NET>
Subject: Re: Oil Change: I know this sounds ridiculous...
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Run vehicle until the engine is warmed up.
Park in a nice level spot.
Put your oil catch pan under the engine, right under the oil drain plug.
The oil drain plug is the "bolt" you see on the bottom of the engine (takes
a 13mm wrench) that lives in a shallow recess about the size of a silver
dollar. Don't confuse the oil drain plug with the oil strainer plate bolt
the lives nearby in the middle of the large (about 4" diameter) black oil
strainer plate.
Loosen the oil drain plug (counterclockwise) and let the oil drain into your
pan. You might find that with the last twist of the oil drain plug it'll
fall right into the pan. Don't worry about it, you can fish it out later.
While the oil is draining, carefully unscrew (counterclockwise) the oil
filter. This can be difficult to unscrew because it's somewhat recessed and
you can only get the fingertips of one hand on the thing. I've got one of
those tools that snaps into your ratchet wrench and grabs the bottom of the
oil filter - kind of like the old-fashioned kitchen jar-top remover - and
makes it much easier. There's also large plastic "sockets" that snap into
your ratchet wrench and fit specific-sized filters like at
http://tinyurl.com/2h3ys; just make sure you get the correct size.
With the filter loosened continue to unscrew it by hand and, keeping the
filter vertical so you don't spill the oil that's inside, remove it and
carefully set it aside so you can drain it later. You can have some oil
dripping from this area so you might want to put a piece of cardboard or
some rags down before completely removing the filter.
At this point you should be able to move your oil drain pan out of the way,
though you might want to put a piece of cardboard under there to catch the
last few drips. Replace the oil drain plug, making sure you have the copper
crush washer in place. A new copper crush washer is nice but if you don't
have one reuse the old one. The important thing is USE A COPPER CRUSH
WASHER. Also, don't over tighten the oil drain plug. The torque spec is
around 12 -13 ft./lbs. so "snug" is good enough.
Open a fresh bottle of oil and fill the oil filter. The paper element
inside will absorb oil as you do this so take a couple of minutes and "top
it off" a few times until the filter is reasonably full. Smear a thin film
of fresh oil on the rubber gasket on top of the filter and screw it back
into place, finger tight.
Pull out the oil filler tube behind the license plate cover and fill the
engine with 3.7 quarts of oil, including the oil you've put in the filter
before installing it.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Young '81 Vanagon
Lafayette, CA 94549 '82 Westfalia
---------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Russell, William" <william.russell@UW-INC.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 5:10 AM
Subject: Oil Change: I know this sounds ridiculous...
> I know this sounds pathetic and ridiculous to most of you but I've never
> changed my own oil. Most of the issue is that I've never had a place to
do
> it before. I'm about to embark on a 1500 mile round trip and feel that I
> should change my oil before I go. I'm scared that I'll screw it up and
ruin
> my whole trip. How ridiculously easy is it? Should I really do it myself
> having no past experience? Can anyone give me a detailed procedure (I'm
> paranoid so the more detailed, the better). I have a 1980 Air-cooled
> Westfalia. I'm heading to Tennessee (hot) so what weight should I run?
> 30W50?
