Girls can’t change oil.

I’ve never heard a mechanic say “I don’t want to deal with this car” for anything – let alone for something as simple as an oil change.

Until yesterday. I call the auto shop down the street for the first time, ask when I can bring my car in for an oil change – “Come now?”

Sure. Five minutes later, I’m there.  I warn him that my console cover is removed because I’ve been working on repairing my gearshift linkage, but I need the oil changed before I do any more work.  “No problem,” he says.

Yet when he gets in the car to pull it in to the garage, he slams the gearshift too hard, and the linkage pops off the shift cable.  I hopped in and fixed it within 15 seconds, so he could continue to pull in.  Shut the door… rinse, lather, repeat.

He gets out and says that he refuses to work on the car because he can’t drive it.  I offer to pull it in and come back to pull it out out when it’s done if needed.

“I won’t work on this car.”  My mouth agape (’cause it’s just an oil change), I offer to sit there and wait for it to be done, and pull it back out of the garage as soon as it’s done.

“Oh, I forgot I have another car coming now.  Go down the street.”

Don’t get me wrong: my Saturn looks like a piece of crap: the console cover is missing, it’s filled with socket wrenches and dirty clothes that have been waiting to be taken to the laundromat since my battery died, and it’s been a little too long since my last oil change.  But it runs just fine now that I’ve replaced the battery, and it shifts just fine, so long as you don’t beat the hell out of the gearshift.  How could I have gotten there and back otherwise?

So I left.

Growing up, I’d always tried to get my dad to show me how to do things around the house: use a soldering iron, install a new electrical outlet, replace a car battery, change the oil in my car…. but I was always told “girls aren’t supposed to change their oil, go do the dishes instead.”  So, lately, I’ve been teaching myself.

So I drove my car to the auto parts store, picked up some parts and tools, went to the office for a few hours, then came home and changed into some greasemonkey clothes to change my oil for the first time. And within an hour and a half, I was driving my car to the grocery store under the power of my own two hands.

Wanna do it yourself?

Here’s what you need to change the oil on a Saturn SL-series:

• 2 Jack Stands
  Don’t even think about changing your oil using just your car jacks – if they collapse, you’re a goner.  I picked up two jack stands, a hydraulic jack and a creeper (that thing with wheels you lay on to slide under the car) for $29.99 ($49.99 – $20 rebate) from Kragen.  It’s well worth it.
• 14mm wrench (I used a socket wrench).
• Oil filter band wrench. About $6.
• Oil filter to fit your car.  On the 1996 Saturn SL1, I used a Fram PH3614.  The auto parts stores can help you find the right part.
• Replacement gasket for your oil drain plug – you might need it.
  They’re less than a dollar at the Saturn dealer – get a couple and keep them in your glove box.
• 4-5 quarts of oil.
  Saturn recommends 5W30, but you might want to use a different viscosity depending on your climate… check what’s in your engine now for a guide.  Personally, I’d get 5 quarts – not a bad idea to have an extra handy in case there’s a spill (or you need to top off later).
• A drip pan to catch the old oil.
  Not any kind of container with a narrow opening.  Seriously, trust me… you may think you can use an old laundry detergent container with the spout removed, but anything narrower than a pie pane, and you’ll end up with oil all over the ground.  Trust me.
• Kitty litter.
  But not used kitty litter.  Yup, learned that one the hard way too.*
• Ladies: you may want to put a bandanna on your head to cover your hair.
  Trust me on this one too.  Motor oil is not a great conditioner, especially for treated hair.

Ready?

1. Raise the car high enough so that you can fit underneath it.  Make sure you put the jack and jack stands in the location recommended by your auto manufacturer to support the car… but you should already know how to do this from fixing a flat tire, right?
2. Slide under the passenger side of the car and look for the drain pan.  The drain pan is a large metal pan can with ridges on the underside, and a bolt sticking out the wheel-ward side, pointing towards the rear of the car.  On newer cars, the drain pan will be black.  On my car, it was more of a ‘burnt sienna’ color (meaning, covered in rust).    The bolt sticking out is the oil drain plug, where the oil will come out.  Place the drip pan below the oil drain plug, so that the center of the drip pan is below the oil drain plug.
3. Loosen the oil drain plug using the 14mm socket wrench.  Be careful – as soon as the plug is loose enough, oil will start pouring out rapidly.
4. While the oil is draining, scoot out from under the car and inspect the gasket on the oil drain plug.  If it looks worn or damaged, replace it with one of the new gaskets.
5. When the oil has come to a drip, replace the oil drain plug and tighten it back up with the 14mm socket wrench.  Make sure it’s as tight as possible… otherwise, you’ll have a leak on your hands.
6. Once you’ve found the drain pan, it’s easy to find the oil filter.  First, take the new oil filter out of its packaging to figure out what you’re looking for.  On a Saturn, look up from the oil drain pan and the axle going to the passenger-side wheel.  Depending on who changed your oil last, it could be different colors: Saturn oil filters are white, the FRAM oil filters are orange and black (but you’ll probably only see black from where you are).
7. Take the oil filter band wrench and place it around the oil filter so that the handle is on the left side pointing upward.  To tighten the belt around the filter, pull the handle down.  Once the belt is tightened around the filter, use the wrench to loosen the filter.  You’ll have to reposition the wrench and re-tighten the belt several times to loosen the filter.
8. Oil will start to drip once the filter is loosened.  Use your hand to loosen the filter the rest of the way, taking great caution to not spill any oil on the axle boot.  I repeat – DO NOT SPILL ANY OIL ON THE AXLE BOOT…     if you do, wipe it up right away.  Then wipe it again.  And again.  You don’t want any oil on the axle boot.
9. Pop out from under the car and check to see if the oil filter gasket is still on the outer edge of the old oil filter (look at the gasket on the new filter for comparison).  If there isn’t a rubber gasket stuck to the old filter, go back under the car and find it… it’s probably still stuck to the engine block.  If you install two gaskets on top of each other, oil will leak out of your engine, and  that would be bad.
10. Wipe off the mounting plate with a disposable shop towel or paper towel.  You don’t want any gunk getting in your engine block.
11. Pour a little bit of the new, clean oil on a paper towel (a ½ teaspoon at most) and apply to the new oil filter’s gasket – this will help seal the filter to the engine block and prevent leaks.
12. Screw the new filter on using your hand, and once you can’t tighten it any more, take the band wrench, put it on ‘upside-down’ from how it was before, and give it another ¼ to ½ turn to make sure it’s fully tightened.
13. Almost done: lower the car, one side at a time.
14. Pop open the hood and remove the oil cap from the engine block.  Add the 4 quarts of oil (3 new quarts and the one you’ve already opened).  You can use a funnel, but I usually just open the quart, put two fingers over the top of the container, then flip it upside down, position over the engine block and quickly pull my fingers back, then put down the container and let all the oil totally drain into the engine block.
15. Replace the oil cap and wait about 5 minutes for the oil to reach the drain pan.  Make sure nothing is leaking.  Check your oil level with the dipstick.
16. Start the engine and let it run for a few minutes (not in a closed garage, though… carbon monoxide poisoning is a bad thing).  Check under the car to make sure there are no drips or leaks from anywhere in the engine.
17. Turn off the engine, and check the oil level with the dipstick again.
18. Pour the contents of the drain pan into a container for recycling.  If you don’t know where to take the oil in your neighborhood, check out Earth 911 to search for facilities near your zip code.  Recycling facilities can turn used motor oil into fuel that can be used to generate heat in furnaces, in power plants to generate electricity, and it can also be re-refined to meet the same API specifications as virgin motor oil.
    Be forewarned: if you pour it on the ground or down the drain, I will hunt you down.

So, the first time around, start-to-finish (including a shower to wash the oil out of my hair) was ~1:15.  Now that I know my way around my engine and have figured out the process, I’d guess it’ll probably take about 20 – 25 minutes.

And I tell you this:  thanks to the feeling of accomplishment I had from figuring out how to change my own oil, I didn’t even feel the need to pick up any Dark Chocolate-covered Pistachio Toffee after driving to Trader Joe’s.

It was that good.

So yes, girls can change their own oil.  And do it right.

* I thought that the former residents had kindly left a bag of kitty litter in my carport for cleaning up auto fluid spills.  Unfortunately, it was too late that I discovered that it was, in fact, where they stored their used kitty litter.  Unsanitary, unsafe (especially for pregnant women)… and nasty!

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