Quote:
Originally Posted by BillK
Why are you guys going through all this trouble tilting, jacking the back wheels, front wheels etc?
Just slide a heavy duty jack under the front jacking point (the black plastic one between drain plugs) and lift, put a safety jack under one or both front sides, then drain the oil. Lower the car back to the floor while the oil drains. Get a cooking pan to catch the oil, they have a low profile. Change the filter while the oil is draining, then jack back up and install the drain bolts. All you need is one big jack and a safety jack. No ramps or multiple jacks.
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I find it hard to believe anyone has done this without making a huge mess.
What I found worked was to back up onto ramps (got everything lined up right on the third try), lift a front corner enough with a little jack to get a big jack in behind the front wheel to reach the front center jack point, raise the front up enough to get jack stands under it, leaving the front just a notch lower than the rear. I had to pull the jack out to get to the drain plugs since the jack point is smack in the middle of them. There's no freaking way to get a drain pan in place with a jack in there. Very little comes out of the front sump but I got about 9 liters from the rear in about an hour. Sadly I forgot to loosen the fill cap and oil filter before I let it drain during lunch, so it was still dripping a bit when I had to put the plugs back in.
Luckily the pan I got has a nice little grill in the top to catch the drain plugs, although one of them bounced right off of it and dripped oil across the floor
By the time I got all the oil out and swap the filter, clean up all the drips, and pour in 8.5 liters of cold oil, one at a time (because I can't find 10w60 in 5qt jugs), the engine was stone cold so I drove around the block to get it back up to temp, stopped in the garage so it'd be level, and restarted the car to kick off the measurement. It took half an hour to do with the sensor what I could have done in half a minute with a dipstick.
Then it still called for another liter, so if you get a full drain, I guess it really needs 9.5.
By the way, it's kind of a pisser that the oil filter housing is tilted on these engines... makes it a bit tougher to get the old filter out without dripping oil everywhere. I miss my E36 with an all-aluminum housing and lid
