Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Push-button oil change

Chuck and Susan aboard m/v Beach House have made oil changes a white glove affair.
You may or may not consider this a small project, but after our first oil change on our Ford Lehman 120, we knew that our old practice of sucking the oil out through the dipstick tube was just not going to work for us. Once again, I relied on past experiences while servicing other boats, and we installed the X-change-R oil change system. It took some work, since first we had to get all of the oil out of the engine using the suction method. Then the drain plug in the bottom of the oil pan needs to be removed. A line is run from where the old plug is in the oil pan to the oil changer pump. Finally, power needs to be run from the breaker panel to the pump. It can take a day or a weekend to complete, but in the end, we found it has paid off big. The oil change now takes minutes, and the mess is minimal. The oil can be extracted from the engine and then the engine filled from the oil containers. No pouring and spilling.
Just a note - the oil change pump on Eolian that I removed had been destroyed because it's temperature limitations had been ignored. Warm oil: easy to pump. Hot oil: no pumping ever again.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! I'm going to check into this. My drain plug has already been replaced with a hose so the installation should be a snap. I've been using a drill-operated pump but this is so much cleaner. Thanks for the lead.

    -Steve

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cool project.

    We ♥ our brass oil pump.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Be careful how high the new drain fitting sticks up into the oil pan.
    If it is not flush it could leave quite a bit of oil still sitting there.
    I read a post where somebody installed one of these and then to double check he did his normal drain tube to the lowest corner and got almost another quart out.

    ReplyDelete

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