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They say that the third time is the charm. In a great number of cases this has been proven true. I have for you today, one more case of this.

My car does the job. It gets me where I want to go, when I want to go there. Sure, it is getting a bit old, but that doesn’t matter. Japanese cars are well designed to last long. I like driving it, and though it has been sounding a little off lately, it has been good to me. But, time to time, an oil change needs to be made. I can’t remember my last oil change, but it had to be more than 8 months ago. I needed one, and I really wanted to do it myself rather than pay someone to do it.

I talked to Derek, and he agreed to help me out with it, since I have next to no knowledge about what goes on under the hood of a car, and he has experience in that department. Oil changes are routine, so it couldn’t be that hard, right? Why did it take three attempts to do then? There is a good reason for that.

The First Attempt
I talked my dad into letting me get the stuff for the oil change. All we should need were a filter and 5 quarts of oil. We got in his shiny black Malibu and drove up to Murray’s to get the needed supplies. Murray’s brand oil is the cheapest, and with my car’s pristine condition, only the best would be of interest to me. I bought a 1 gallon jug of Murray’s oil, and a quart of Murray’s oil. On to the filter. Nope. They were out of the filters for my car. I could have gotten a “premium” filter for $12.99. Screw that, I was only getting the best. I wanted my $3.79 filter. The attempt was a failure. I walked away with only oil.

The Second Attempt: Ramps
Once we had a nice day I climbed up to my garage’s old musty attic. Actually, it was more of poking my head up through the opening. I got down the ramps from the previous home owner, and despite some dust, they looked fine. I threw them into the trunk and went to Derek’s house. From there we ran up to Murray’s for a filter, and sure enough, there was a $3.79 FRAM filter for my car. We were already farther than last time — I actually made it to Derek’s with all the needed stuff.

We layed the ramps down in the garage, and lined them up with my tires. I got in and turned the engine on. Pushing the clutch in, I rocked the shifter lever to the left so I could push it forward into 1st gear. Pushing it into 1st, and giving a touch of gas and letting the clutch out very slightly, I began to climb the ramps. It felt like I was pulling a big wheelie in my car.

“Almost there, just another inch”, Derek told me. I gave it a tiny bit more gas, and continued creeping up the ramps. Suddenly, I felt an odd sensation of sinking very quickly. I thought I had overshot the ramps or somthing. The problem with that theory was that one ramp was all the way across the garage and against the shelves. The other ramp was against Derek’s leg. Stupid things shot out on me! We were too nervous to try that again. It wasn’t worth the safety/property risks to try that again. Plus we noticed the ramps were pretty bent up (not from me though). Derek’s jack was broken, so I couldn’t jack the car up high enough. I went home, and gave up for the day. We went to meijer that night and purchased a $25 2-ton floor jack for next time. I was determined.

Attempt 3
I went over Derek’s house on Wednesday. Sunday’s failure was fuel for our determination to get this done. We used my brand new floor jack, and got the car as high as the jack would go. To our dismay, the jack stands that Derek had were too high for my jack. We couldn’t get it to fit under no matter where we put the jack. Finally, we drove over to his grandpa’s house to borrow some lower jacks (see, Derek’s are designed for tractors). He lent us a pair of jack stands that were much lower than Derek’s.

Back at Derek’s house, we jacked the car up, and successfully managed to get a jack stand under the car. We repeated the process on the other side as well. Then we chocked the rear wheels as extra protection. Time had come for us to drain the old oil out. Derek had an epic battle with probably the most stubborn screw on earth. It didn’t even respond to a half can of WD-40 being sprayed onto it. We tried hitting our wrench with the back of an axe, and we tried using a dead-blow mallet. Neither worked. Finally Derek got out from under the car, and left the wrench hanging. He crouched by the side of the car, braced himself against the car, grabbed the wrench, and pulled with all his might. The stubborn screw gave in and popped loose. We slid the oil pan under the car and removed the screw all the way. The oil was a deep black. It looked like a piece of black plastic was connecting the oil tank to the pan.

Once the oil was drained we searched for the oil filter. The genius Japanese engineers were thinking about convenience when they placed the filter way up high, between pipes (including the exhaust which was still hot) so that one would have to contort his arm to get the filter out. Derek grappled with that for a few minutes. Suddenly he grunted “ugh”. I asked him if he was ok, and he said “Your car just peed on me!”. I looked under the car and his arm was covered with warm black oil. We both started laughing, and he went inside to wash it off. when he came back out he screwed the new filter in, and we lowered the car down. I added 5 quarts of oil to the car, and fired it up. It liked the new oil.

While the car was running we poured the old oil into the 1 gallon jug. I was dangerously low on oil. Maybe around 1/3 of a gallon of oil was in my car. No wonder it sounded and felt bad when I was driving it! It drove great home, and sounded great. I’m looking forward to driving tomorrow.

In conclusion: Oil changes are an easy thing to do, and they can be tons of fun if done with friends!