Oil Changing Tips

Car retailers, manufacturers, and mechanics alike place considerable importance on the role of engine oil in your car. Most motorists believe with good reason that one of the simplest ways of prolonging the life of your vehicle is to change your car’s oil regularly. If you value your car enough, you’ll know the importance of keeping in pristine shape and efficient performance. This article lays down a few oil change tips that you can use to make sure you are able to get your car’s oil changed without hassle.

Read Up A Bit

To make sure you don’t end up making a mistake in changing your car’s oil, the most important thing to do is to take a look at the owner’s manual for the car. The manual is likely to contain details of the capacity of oil that the engine has and the viscosity levels of the oil to be added. Make sure that you are aware of the details of oil weight and type before you try your hand at this.

Start The Engine And Warm It Up

Oil change means a complete overhaul of the oil in the engine currently, and for that, all that oil needs to be drained before new oil is added. The best way to do that is to make sure that the engine is warmed up before you drain the oil. A hot engine warms the oil up and warm travel faster than cold, thick oil.

Be Neat And Clean

The main issue with an oil changing exercise is the effects of oil spill. When you are draining in old oil from the system or pouring down the new one, the oil is likely to spill, causing damage to the floor of your working area. Hence, to make sure you avoid this fate, it is important to use vinyl curtains to cover the floor and making sure the oil is restricted only to the curtains. Vinyl curtains tend to come in cheap and tend to cover large swathes of space, giving your driveway or garage floor protection against oil spills.

Use Correct Tools

While you may believe in your upper body strength, it is important that your car’s oil filter is not the place to show it off. Opening and closing of your car’s drain filter to drain the oil and stopping the new oil from leaking is a task best done using specially designed torque wrenches. The use of a torque wrench is particularly important when you are closing the drain to make sure the new oil doesn’t leak. While you may open the drain lug using your hands, tightening is unlikely to be as straight forward. A minor weakness in the tightening could lead to leakage of the engine oil from the car.

Always Have Reserves

The role of engine oil in the functioning of the car is integral. This means that the car’s performance and efficiency depends on the state of your engine oil. Keeping that in mind, it is imperative that you keep a reserve gallon or two of the exact type and weight of engine oil that is already in your car. This is likely to be important in cases where you may find that an unlikely leak or car problem has decreased the car’s engine oil. Running the car on low engine oil can be damaging for the car and keeping spares would help you negate that.


While changing engine oil using these tips may seem like an easy task, it is recommended that you come to us to get your engine oil changed, since we are the best judges of quality of oil in your car.