Sulli
21-01-2005, 07:42 PM
Did my second oil change in as many weeks today :$ , thought i'd share my experience. Sorry if it's teaching some of you to suck eggs.
As soon as I got the car a couple of weeks ago, i changed the oil. I used some half-decent Semi-Synthetic 10w-40 oil. When i bought it, the woman in our local motor factors told me it was the best oil you could get :rolleyes: , it always stayed the same colour, however long you left between changes :rolleyes5 , and that her husband had used it in all his cars, and some of those were GTi's! :laugh:
Anyway, once i'd finished laughing, and bitten back the urge to educate her, thinking that i'd just come across as patronising (which would have been well earned by her), I bought it, as i knew it'd only be in a couple of weeks.
Anyway, my delivery of Silkolene Pro S Racing oil (5W-40, Ester based) came today, so I did an oil and filter change.
I got the car up on ramps (though i needed to roll the car onto chocks first, so the ramps didn't catch on the front spoiler). The first thing I found was that the wotsits that keep the undertray in place are crap :rolleyes5 I was ultra careful taking them off, but still broke one!
Once off, the filter is dead easy to get to, near the fron of the engine, and I managed to unscrew it by hand, without resorting to the old trick of hammering a big screwdriver through it, which always makes a mess.
Then, off with the sump plug. Managed to anticipate the flow (it's a man thing) and catch it all in the bucket :). The old oil, which has been in for 2 weeks, and all of 400 miles, was pretty dark, certainly far blacker than when it went in. I was tempted to return it to the woman and ask for a refund, but thought better of it :D
Let it all drain for 10 minutes, and in the meantime I slowly primed the new filter (putting new oil in, a little at a time). Once done, I wiped off the filter housing on the engine block with a clean clothh and screwed the new filter back on, and tightened as much as I could with one hand (which is plenty). I then put a new sump-plug washer on the sump plug (don't forget not to drop the sump plug in the bucket catching the oil), and replaced the sump plug after wiping excess oil from around the drain hole. Tightened this fairly tight with a socket.
I then put around 3.75 litres of oil in the oil filler, and replaced the undertray.
Putting the undertray back on was the worst bit - took me twice as long as changing the oil and filter, and I was tempted to leave it off. Those fixings for it really are $hit, and I have used cable ties in a few instead - much more likely to stay on, and easy to clip off next time.
I rolled the car back off the ramps, to a level surface, and left it a minute before checking the level with the dipstick. Topped up with a bit of oil, then started her up. Let the oil circulate then turned the engine off, tidied up for 10 minutes,then checked levels again. Including the filter, I put in just under 4.5 litres of new oil, and it's bang on the full mark. Took the car for a good drive and checked again, just to make sure.
The new oil, which is, along with Motul 300V, apparently the best you can get, is very light and clear, so it'll be interesting to see in a couple of weeks, how black it gets. The tappets are certainly quiter, and the engine seems to be smoother (could be placebo effect though).
Anyway - hope that helps someone who wants to save themselves the cost of a garage doing it (and probably not taking as much care as you yourself would). It's dead easy, and will take less than an hour, start to finish.
As soon as I got the car a couple of weeks ago, i changed the oil. I used some half-decent Semi-Synthetic 10w-40 oil. When i bought it, the woman in our local motor factors told me it was the best oil you could get :rolleyes: , it always stayed the same colour, however long you left between changes :rolleyes5 , and that her husband had used it in all his cars, and some of those were GTi's! :laugh:
Anyway, once i'd finished laughing, and bitten back the urge to educate her, thinking that i'd just come across as patronising (which would have been well earned by her), I bought it, as i knew it'd only be in a couple of weeks.
Anyway, my delivery of Silkolene Pro S Racing oil (5W-40, Ester based) came today, so I did an oil and filter change.
I got the car up on ramps (though i needed to roll the car onto chocks first, so the ramps didn't catch on the front spoiler). The first thing I found was that the wotsits that keep the undertray in place are crap :rolleyes5 I was ultra careful taking them off, but still broke one!
Once off, the filter is dead easy to get to, near the fron of the engine, and I managed to unscrew it by hand, without resorting to the old trick of hammering a big screwdriver through it, which always makes a mess.
Then, off with the sump plug. Managed to anticipate the flow (it's a man thing) and catch it all in the bucket :). The old oil, which has been in for 2 weeks, and all of 400 miles, was pretty dark, certainly far blacker than when it went in. I was tempted to return it to the woman and ask for a refund, but thought better of it :D
Let it all drain for 10 minutes, and in the meantime I slowly primed the new filter (putting new oil in, a little at a time). Once done, I wiped off the filter housing on the engine block with a clean clothh and screwed the new filter back on, and tightened as much as I could with one hand (which is plenty). I then put a new sump-plug washer on the sump plug (don't forget not to drop the sump plug in the bucket catching the oil), and replaced the sump plug after wiping excess oil from around the drain hole. Tightened this fairly tight with a socket.
I then put around 3.75 litres of oil in the oil filler, and replaced the undertray.
Putting the undertray back on was the worst bit - took me twice as long as changing the oil and filter, and I was tempted to leave it off. Those fixings for it really are $hit, and I have used cable ties in a few instead - much more likely to stay on, and easy to clip off next time.
I rolled the car back off the ramps, to a level surface, and left it a minute before checking the level with the dipstick. Topped up with a bit of oil, then started her up. Let the oil circulate then turned the engine off, tidied up for 10 minutes,then checked levels again. Including the filter, I put in just under 4.5 litres of new oil, and it's bang on the full mark. Took the car for a good drive and checked again, just to make sure.
The new oil, which is, along with Motul 300V, apparently the best you can get, is very light and clear, so it'll be interesting to see in a couple of weeks, how black it gets. The tappets are certainly quiter, and the engine seems to be smoother (could be placebo effect though).
Anyway - hope that helps someone who wants to save themselves the cost of a garage doing it (and probably not taking as much care as you yourself would). It's dead easy, and will take less than an hour, start to finish.