How to Change Your Oil
Tech & Car · How-to · 7 min read
How to Change Your Oil
An oil change is forty minutes and about twenty dollars in parts. A shop charges four times that, mostly for the forty minutes. The job itself is not difficult — but there are three places it goes expensively wrong, and none of them are the part people worry about.
What you need
- The right oil, in the right grade — the cap on the engine or the manual tells you. Do not guess between 5W-20 and 5W-30
- A new oil filter, and a new drain plug washer (a dollar, and the reason plugs weep)
- Ramps or jack stands. Never a jack alone
- A drain pan that holds more than you think, a filter wrench, and a torque wrench or adapter
The order
- Warm the engine for two or three minutes, then stop. Warm oil drains; hot oil burns you.
- Lift the front and support it on stands or ramps. Chock the rear wheels.
- Loosen the drain plug last-turn by hand and pull it away quickly. Let it drain until it stops running and starts dripping — ten minutes or so.
- Swap the filter. Wipe the mounting face clean, smear fresh oil on the new gasket, and hand-tighten only — three quarters of a turn past contact. A wrench on a spin-on filter is for removal, not fitting.
- Fit the plug with a new washer and torque it to spec — usually 25 to 30 lb-ft on a passenger car.
- Lower the car, then fill. Put in most of the capacity, check the dipstick, add to the mark. Overfilling is as bad as underfilling.
- Start it, look underneath for leaks, stop, wait a minute, re-check the dipstick.
The three ways this goes wrong
1. Stripping the drain plug. The plug threads into a soft aluminium pan on most modern cars. Over-tighten it and you strip the pan, not the plug — and a new oil pan is a several-hundred-dollar job that dwarfs everything you just saved. Under-tighten it and you leave your oil on the driveway a week later.
This is the single strongest argument for a torque tool on a home oil change. A digital torque adapter ($89.99) clips between your ratchet and the socket, you set the number from the manual, and it buzzes when you reach it. No feel, no guessing, no second opinion needed.
2. The old filter gasket stays behind. When you pull the old filter, check the mounting face. If last time’s rubber ring is still stuck there and you screw a new filter over it, you now have two gaskets, and the engine will pump its oil onto the road within a few miles. Look every time.
3. Forgetting the service reminder. Most cars keep their own oil-life counter and it does not know you changed anything. Some reset from the dash menu; many need a scan tool. An OBD2 scanner ($64.99) clears it, and clears the codes a shop would otherwise charge you a diagnostic fee to read.
How often should you change it?
Follow the manual, not the sticker the last shop put on the windscreen. Modern engines on full synthetic commonly go 7,500 to 10,000 miles; conventional oil is nearer 3,000 to 5,000. Short trips, towing, dust and stop-start city driving all shorten it — those are the "severe service" conditions in the manual, and most people drive that way without realising.
What do you do with the old oil?
Pour it back into the new oil’s empty bottles and take it to an auto parts store or a council recycling point. Nearly all of them take it free. It is illegal to bin it or pour it away nearly everywhere, and one gallon contaminates a lot of water.
Do you need to reset anything else?
If the tyre pressure light came on while the car was up in the air, or a code appeared during the job, read it before you assume it is related. Half the codes that show up after home maintenance are a loose connector you brushed past, and a scanner tells you that in thirty seconds.
The tools that pay for themselves here
- Digital Torque Wrench Adapter ($89.99) — drain plug, filter housing, wheel nuts; buzzes at your target
- OBD2 Scanner Car Diagnostic Code Reader ($64.99) — read and clear codes, reset the service light
- 360° Articulating Borescope — for finding where a leak is actually coming from, without pulling anything apart
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