Something New: Week 3 – Changing My Own Oil
by Ranil on Jul.28, 2008
Sometimes doing something new means learning to do things for yourself. This week I decided to try my hand at changing my own oil.
Usually when the Oil Maintenance Required light comes on in my car I cringe at the thought of having to take it in to have the oil changed, usually shelling out quite a bit in the process (Synthetic oil is expensive!). I decided that this week would be the week I take the plunge and try doing it myself. I mean, how hard could it really be right? People all around the world change their own oil and back in the day fathers taught it to their sons as part of growing up. Well, I didn’t have that experience so I had to rely on the good people at My.IS who wrote up a tutorial on how to change the oil in my car.
There were some minor set backs (missing tools and not being able to find a proper oil filter) led to the project being delayed, but with a little help from my sister it finally took off. So, late Sunday afternoon when the day was cooling, the process began. After driving my car up the newly bought ramps I climbed underneath my car and began tinkering around. It took a while to finally get the hang of things (who knew figuring out which was the oil pan would be so complicated?) and removing the oil filter casing proved to be a struggle. After 45 minutes, I could finally say that I had managed to change my own oil. It was messy. Oil managed to find a way to not drain into the oil pan, but all in all it was something that proved worthwhile. The cost of oil and oil filter came out to be almost half of what I would end up paying if I were to take my car in. I spent a little extra trying to get things I needed, but now that I have them I can see myself saving a lot of money by doing my own oil changes.
Was the whole thing worth it? I would say yes. I’m not a mechanic and I have barely a basic understanding of the way a car functions, but this proved that I can do things on my own. Having never done this before I can definitely say it was worth learning and something I look forward to doing again in the future. If I’m lazy then I’ll take my car in to get an oil change. But with the thing taking under an hour (and hopefully a lot less with practice) I must say that it might be worth while doing on my own. With the money left over, who knows, maybe I’ll use that to finance something else on this Something New adventure.
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