Lubed Up and Ready To Go

Although I had never done it on my own, changing the oil in my car has always seemed like the car-oriented task that anybody could figure out how to do themselves. I thought it ranked slightly higher than adding gasoline on the difficulty scale. This is a bold statement from somebody that has little to no natural mechanical proficiency. That has never changed his own oil.

To change your oil, there are only four things that you need: 1. Tools, which I didn’t. 2. A general know-how with automobiles, which I didn’t. 3. Supplies, which I had. And finally, the time and willingness to do it yourself, which I also had. Together with my neighbor, Dave, we had all four. I asked Dave if there was anything that I needed to buy. He told me that I obviously had to get the oil as well as an oil filter, if I wished. He told me that he only changes his oil filter once every other oil change. Like every activity with the blog, I try to immerse myself within the activity and go all the way. Might as well change the oil filter, too. Then Dave asked me if I had thought about what kind of oil that I was going to buy. I could only think of motor oil. Then he told me that there are different kinds of oil.

“If you have a standard American car, you could use a 10w40, 10w30 or 5w30. My mechanic recommends the 5w30 for the summer and I just use it year round,” he told me. “As far as the oil filter, they will have what looks like a phonebook that will tell you what you need to get. All you need to know is the make, model and year.”

Uh oh. My general reaction when people start listing off numbers at me is either to retreat into helplessness or repeat them over and over.

“So you just use the 5w30? I will probably use the 5w30, too. 5w30 sounds great. Yeah, 5w30.” The second issue was the mechanic’s phonebook. There are certain things in life that are humbling. They remind you that you aren’t as smart as you think you are. The mechanic’s phonebook is one of those things for me. It is because of this book and my inability to read it that I have windshield wiper blades that are obviously too small for my car. Now, I didn’t install these wipers myself, I only bought them. Every time that it starts to rain and I turn them on, I start to laugh.

I imagine scenario when the guy installed them. The guy’s name is Jimmy and he has been changing the oil in his family’s vehicle since he was thirteen years old. He’s been a mechanic his entire adult life. He lives in a small town a short commute away. He has always worked in Iowa City, a college town, but never went to college. He scoffs at all the highly educated people that don’t know how to fix anything themselves. He takes the wiper blades from me and tells me that it will only be a few minutes. He walks over to my car and immediately knows that I have bought the wrong sized blades.

“Hey, Bob,” he says, motioning over a coworker. “Check this out.” Jimmy holds up the blades to my windshield. The other guy laughs and comes into the waiting room to get Supervisor Mike. I watch as he leans on the counter with his back to me and says something to Supervisor Mike in hushed tones. Supervisor Mike glances up at me and smiles. Then Bob turns around and smiles at me. Then they both go out to the garage and look at the wipers. After the wipers have been installed, Jimmy pulls my car into a spot in the front. He walks inside and hands me my keys.

“Have a good day,” he tells me. I take the keys, thinking about what great service they have at this place. I drive home and don’t notice the wipers until Leigha sits in the car and points it out within minutes.

Luckily, none of this really happened. And once I was at the store, I didn’t have any problems reading the mechanic’s phonebook; it even recommended 5w30 as the type of oil that I should use. I thought that it was a good sign of what was to come.

            When Dave came over to my house, he started to look under the car and it was too low to get his head under it.

            “I’ll be right back, I am going to get the jack,” he told me. Another tool that I didn’t have. As it turns out, my car sits so low to the ground that we had to pull up on the bumper to get the jack to slide under the car. I put a block of wood behind each of the back tires and we raised the car. Once under the car, we located the bolt that we needed to loosen, but the problem was that none of the standard wrench sizes fit. They were either a little too big or a little too small. I lay down under the car and watched Dave. He was perplexed.

 “Don’t worry, Dave. A lot of my blog is about me failing to do something,” I said. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” he said. After handing me a few different sizes, we finally found one that fit. Then it was too tight for either of us to loosen. So, back to his garage Dave went. He came back with a wrench with a longer handle, for more leverage. Then the problem was that it was too big for me to twist the handle without hitting the drip pan. Moments like these are at the forefront whenever I think about fixing something myself. I told him that maybe we should use a hammer. It seemed like a good suggestion to me. Then I saw it, the flicker of an idea on his face.

         

 “I just need a bigger piece,” he said to himself. “Maybe…” he felt the different sizes with his fingers. He stopped on one “…that one.” He took the piece and slid it over the handle of the wrench, extending it out a few inches. He reached over and loosened the plug. We drained the oil with no issues. Before we added the fresh oil, Dave reminded me to plug the hole again.

            Next, it was time to replace the oil filter. Our only problem was that we couldn’t find it. I had no idea where to look, or really what to look for, despite having a new one in a box next to my leg.

            “Usually they are orange, or some color that stands out,” Dave told me. “I don’t see it anywhere. We might have to Google it.” So that it what we did. Once we finished with my car, we moved over to Dave’s garage and changed the oil in his two cars. I found out that my car is actually more user friendly for a person to change their own oil. Both of Dave’s cars had pieces underneath the car that you had to remove prior to getting to the oil. While he was changing the oil on his second car, I felt pretty proud of myself. I was thinking that I could change my own oil by myself if I needed to. Then he asked me to unscrew the black oil cap to help the oil drain faster. When it was emptied, he plugged the hole and stood up to add the fresh oil.

            “Oh, this isn’t the oil cap,” he told me. “I’m not really sure what this is for.”

            We collected all of the old oil in five quart containers and I took them to the city dump. They had an oil recycle center there for just this purpose. I think that this could be an equal amount of reason that people don’t change their own oil. They don’t want to bother with disposing it, or driving it to a place that will do it for them. I had never really felt as if I was recycling oil until I put my containers on the shelf with the dozens of others ready to be reused.

       
When we were done, Dave asked me if this would be something that I would do regularly myself.

            “Well, it all comes down to price,” I told him. “If it is only a couple of dollars more to have somebody else do it, there is something to be said about the amount of time and dirty hands that I would be saving myself.” My cost: $20.57. Jiffy Lube’s price for the same thing: $36.99. It looks as if I am going to be a little manlier every three months. Assuming a real man lets me borrow his tools.

Do you change your own oil? How old were you when you first started to do it? Do you do it to save money or because you enjoy doing it?