Today was a weird day. Read if bored.

[rebellovw]

Great read. Love the Florida bird comment.

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[gj]

That was a good story to break up a boring lunch at work.

 

[el-guapin]

LoL!.. "My mama always told me there'll be days like these!"
THNX 4 Sharing!

 

[ChromaticGrey]

The thing i hate about doing oil myself is that it seems every time i go to the oil drop off, it is fucking full, what the living fuck. Then for years the place i worked had a place i could dump my waste oil on the weekends, and they would take it away when it was full (there was waste oil for other reasons, my 10 - 15 qts a year from my acura cl was nothing). We just moved production to Nevada, and that oil drum is long gone. IDK what i'm gonna do for oil changes now.............. deep depression thinking about it now. There is nobody i trust more than myself to work on my car.

 

[rum_punch_ruby]

You should've bought a lotto ticket while getting gas as something was bound to go your way eventually.

 

[JohnBoyNC]

Ok.......now I understand why some people use Jiffy Lube.

 

[hws52]

So, I’ve been active with doing crap for my GT lately.

Replaced the rear Perelli’s wth Firehawk Indy 500’s. The Perelli’s made it 10,000 miles and were digging into the wear bars. Love the Indy’s so far. They look like a drag radial and are FAR more compliant and sticky than the P’s from the driving I’ve done so far.

I decided to get my windows tinted today. Went with a 3M film, 15%. Looks freaking awesome and hopefully will help with the Florida heat and more importantly blocking UV rays to save my skin and the interior. I got I pretty straight forward deal from a long time local place.

I decided it was time to change my oil as well, as the car had an oil change pre-purchase around 5,700mi which I assume was the first change. Quicklane did it, so it was probably synthetic blend Motorcraft and I’d put 5k on it.

I by chance found that Pep Boys had a special, $20 for a 5 qt jug of Pennzoil Platinum. Picked up two jugs and an FL500S filter.

This is when things went a little awry. I door dinged TWO vehicles opening the stupid ass wide doors on this car. They we’re very soft contacts and I checked 3-4x to make sure there WASN’T any marking on the other vehicle. That rattled my nerves.

So on to changing my oil. My previous ride was a Focus ST and required you to drop the engine “diaper” which isn’t hard but it’s annoying. Other than that, it’s a super fast oil change on that car.

Problem 1 - I live in an apartment complex. The pavement is as slick as ice. It took me 30min or trial and error and literally utilizing parking stops to keep my ramps from skating out from under the front tires.

Fast forward to the fact I now have to have a container that will hold 8qt of dead dinosaurs and coal. I picked up a 10qt drain with a lid, drain spout and a mesh “tray” to catch the drain plug. I was super nervous about pulling the drain plug because I was afraid it’d spill everywhere. Things worked out, plus I put a BATB (big ass trash bag) under the drain, just in case.

Feeling accomplished that I got the oil out was cut violently short. The “catch tray” gets a little flaccid once the hot oil hits it and it proceeded to drop into the container full of oil as I was going to reach for the drain plug. I had to get a little creative with a funnel to fish the mesh piece out and thankfully the drain plug as well.

I was pretty happy that it was only one fastener to drop the tray for the oil filter. That’s where the next excitement ended. First off, the filter that was on there was weeping. I’m hoping it was just loose, but I didn’t care about that as much as I did the angle the filter sits at and how I knew it would literally leak on everything from the subframe to what appeared to be the alternator wire harness.

So I carefully loosened the filter and let it drain some, trying to minimize the damage. Well, it slipped when I took it off and I was lightly deep frying my hand in oil, trying not to drop the filter in the drain pain and cause a tsunami of PROP 65 sticky black gold.

Now my backup plan (BATB) has failed me, we have a real problem. I’m trying to minimize the damage as I feel the Florida state bird (mosquitos) sucking the blood from my ankles. At this time I’m just pissed.

Put the new filter on, tighten, go to fill oil. Manage to spill oil somehow as I am adding. Not much but enough to trigger further disappointment in my first GT oil change.

Finish that, clean up my tools and mess. Decide I’m going to dispose of the oil tonight so I take a trip to the parts store. The girl behind the counter told me to just leave the oil there and they’d dispose of it. She didn’t understand I had a reusable container that I wanted to take home. So I went back to the oil dump, it’s got a padlock on it.

Went back to the register, the girl is like do you need anything else? I said well, the oil dump is locked. So she walks back there with me and flips the lid from the other side. At this point I’m like man I’m an F’ing idiot. She apparently thought so to, as she goes “do you need me to help you pour it?” Dafuq?!?! I’m like, “no, I’m good.. thanks”. Fast forward 30 seconds. The stupid ass container slips and dumps probably half a quart on top of the oil disposal container before I can stop it.

Now I’m livid. I run to the bathroom, grab paper towels and start sopping up the Exxon Valdez. 5min later, I’m throwing stuff in the trash can and the bag slips into the can. Ok, whatever. Fix that. Notice I had oil on my leg because the stupid container leaked, which meant it leaked on the squeaky clean white floor. Went and wiped that up.

Finally go to leave and the girl walks back, forgetting I am there, so all she sees is some random guy walking out of the back of the store. What further didn’t help this is I was wearing gloves while dumping the oil, so it probably looked pretty sketchy. She may have had to change her pants as I startled her pretty bad. At least she didn’t throw a punch... lol.

Get to my car, take the extra trash bag I had lining the floor, flap it around to open it up, put oil container in, leave.

Stop for gas. Notice there’s oil on the side of my car. Look closer, notice there’s oil on my window. OK, well apparently there was oil on the trash bag I flung open. Grabbed a napkin and gently dab the oil off my door. Go to wipe the window and my stomach dropped. THE OIL WAS ON THE INSIDE, ON MY 6hr OLD TINT!!! I was like WTF, WTF IS GOING ON?! I freaked out, wiped it with the napkin.. left a nasty streak. I thought this is it, I just ruined this window. I rushed back and hit it with some soap and water and a microfiber towel. THANKFULLY it came off and it doesn’t seem to have left anything.

Sooo with all that being said, it was a lot of weird random stuff for a day. Try to treat the car to a good day and look at what happens.. lol.

Ha! Ha! Good read, woke me up. Glad at least it ended well without damage. I thought my first oil change was a disaster when I didn't realize how far the oil shoots out horizontally when I pulled the plug with the car on the ramps. Luckily I only dumped about a quart or so on the floor.

 

[RIBS]

Been there, done that, spilled 5 quarts of dirty oil across my garage floor....well written, welcome to the party!

 

[Nomadic]

Weird for me too. As I've never seen Pirelli spelled that way.

In all honestly sounds like what happens to me when I try to wrench on stuff.
I'm in a condo complex and have an underground spot. I'll take it to the speed shop or the dealer for the oil change most likely.

 

[Johnnybee]

Luckily I have never had quite a day like yours, and I have been doing my own oil changes for decades. Keep doing them yourself regardless of this experience! I stopped using quick lubes after they: (i) put a filter on my ‘91 Caprice so tight I had to do the screwdriver thing to get it off; and (ii) rounded off the drain plug on our ‘93 Aerostar such that I needed vice grips to remove it (and then climbed into the Caprice to go buy a new one). In each case I had done many changes on both vehicles without issue and let the the quick lube do a single change during some particularly cold weather.

 

[Shifting_Gears]

Loving the replies, haha. Glad to see I’m not the only one that’s had a day like that.

@Nomadic fat fingering on an iPhone can make you spell things severely incorrect. But you’ve never heard of Perelli’s? Far more rare than their Pirelli cousins!! Lol.

Tint - for shits and giggles:

 

[Nomadic]

tints looking good.

 

[TexasRebel]

a few suggestions:

1) change oil when it is warm... not hot.
2) get the filter off just far enough that it will drain via the surface tension. The oil will travel down the side of the filter body and clear everything before going into the catch pan. Then you can get a better grip on the filter (two hands even) from above the brace (instead of trying to reach into the flap).
3) those oil absorbent mats are great. get one.

 

[IPOGT]

Ha! Ha! Good read, woke me up. Glad at least it ended well without damage. I thought my first oil change was a disaster when I didn't realize how far the oil shoots out horizontally when I pulled the plug with the car on the ramps. Luckily I only dumped about a quart or so on the floor.

That was a great read. Sounds exactly like something that has or would happen to me. Thanks for sharing your story buddy. At least you didn't slide on your @ss and hurt something. Ever notice when one thing goes south it starts a domino effect?

 

[rob_s]

I guess I'm lucky the worst that happened to me on an oil change is I forgot to open the vent hole on my drain pan and by the time I realized it the force of opening it spilled oil everywhere (at least I was parked in maintenance's spot and not my own so they didn't know who did it). Of course, it did take me 6 hours and a portion of my sanity to install my exhaust.

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