You know you're supposed to do them regularly, but then its getting cold and damp, and crawling around under the car is less than fun, red hot oil up your sleeve as you get the sump plug off, fishing the sump plug out of the oil drain, oh the list of reasons to put it off just grows....
Well, I bought myself a new toy in the form of a Pela 6000. It looks like this:
its a vacuum liquid extractor, and for oil changes on a 480, it's a breeze! Lets have a look shall we?
Open the lid and and look at that - Dipstick is easy to get to, so is the oil filter.
So, with the engine nice and warm (cooling fans cut in a least once), switch off, remove the dipstick, drop in the pela tube, and give the handle a few pumps. Oil extraction begins!
Much like a normal oil change you can wander off and leave it drain, I returned and gave a few pumps from time to time. Soon there was no more oil being extracted - more air than oil in the tube.
and look at all that waste oil....
which you can easily decant into your disposal drum of choice
Next up the filter - I always like to date my filters, just in case I forget when I last changed the oil.
now at this point, I'll confess that I had the drip tray off and my traditional oil catcher underneath; There's always going to be some oil in the filter thanks to the non-return valve, and that will inevitably hit the ground. I was also intrigued to discover how much oil couldn't be sucked out. So here's the total amount of oil drained from the sump (about 3 dribbles) and from the oil filter drop
In summary, I blummin love this thing; I've a small fleet of cars, and oil changes are always a messy affair. If you do your own maintenance you need one of these in your life.
