Car Service - Draining Your Old Oil

Hi, I am Andrew Davidson, Master Technician from Currys Auto Service. Now I am going to show you how to drain your old oil. What I want to do now is roll our drain pan over, grab my wrench for removing the drain plug. Now when you are going to remove the drain plug you always want to make sure you have the right sized wrench, you dont want to use an adjustable wrench, you dont want to use pliers, you want to have the right tool for the job, because if you strip it, it can become a real mess. They are generally not very tight and hopefully if nobody has stripped it out or wrenched it on too tight; it should come right out with your fingers.

Okay, what we are doing now, is were going to let the oil drain. When you are going to do your oil change, youre best at, is to have your car warm but not hot. You dont want to have to do with hot oil, but if the oil is just warm, it will drain more quickly and more thoroughly. Were going to wipe up any oil left here just to make the job neat, and so, well know if we have any leaks when we are done. I am going to take my drain plug and I am going to just clean it off, make sure that there is no debris on it, make sure its good and clean. On some vehicles there is a gasket on the drain plug that needs to be changes periodically. You are going to need to inspect that and when before you take the drain plug out, obviously if its leaking, then you are going to want to either get a new drain plug or get a new gasket for the drain plug depending on the application.

I am going to start the drain plug and like I said, most of the time this is will go in by hand. Sometimes you do have to wrench them, but you are going to be -- want to be very careful not to cross for it. Tightening the drain plug, it does not take a lot of torque thats about all it takes. Its just lightly hand tight, good and snug, but it does not need to be wrenched extremely tight. I am going to move our drain pan. Now what I am going to do is reinstall a splash shield that we removed.

Depending on what you are working on, how much room you have underneath that it maybe helpful to have what they call a mechanics scraper, which is basically a small car with four wheels on it. They make it little easier to roll in and out from under the car, probably would make the job easier, not totally necessary all the time. I am just using a quarter inch drive rechargeable impact, to put these in. They dont need to be very tight. You can obviously do it by hand, this just makes the job a little quicker and thats how you drain your old oil.