i drove the wagon for the first time in weeks to get an oil change..i plan on limping it over to a show saturday in town..i asked for 20w50..i had to drive over to autozone so i could get a filter,because they didnt have one in stock.i paid extra for the oil. well i started driving it home,and the thing was running about 20/30 degrees hotter than normal.i thought to myself,this is weird.this is fresh oil,and its thicker,plus the guy topped off the radiator.well i get home and i hear the engine is ticking a little more than normal.i look on my reciept..the damn redneck put in 5w20!!how the hell he got 5w20 from 20w50 i dont know.especially when i was talking with my dad on the phone,standing next to the guy about how i was putting 20/50 in the thing,asking him how his 72 chevy liked it.im so pissed off.im going back to the oil change shop and making them fix their mistake. this ridiculous.how the hell would not even try and question it if you heard someone askingfor 5/20 on a 90 degree day to go in your 41 year old car.
You should have changed it yourself. Try it. It aint hard. Anyone who goes to those quick lube places better take it for granted that they're gonna have problems. Billy
well for one i change oil all day at work,and i get tired of changing it.two and three all my tools are at work,and i also cant do oil changes where i live.i dont have anywhere else at the moment where i can do it.
but where do you guys take your old oil? that's the only problem i have with changing oil. No gas stations take it anymore. and even the autozones and other shops always have a sign that says. Sorry, Oil collector is full. you guys just toss it in your yard?
I used to manage a quick lube oil change. I don't think we ever messed up, not once. But then again, I was the manager, my best friend was my ***t mgr, my little brother and another friend worked there. We are all car guys so we usually knew more about the cars than the owners. There's some real *****s that work at oil changes. To get the job, the only question you have to answer correctly is "Do you know how to change oil?". When they called me and asked me to manage the place they had 4 monkeys working there that couldn't tell their own ***hole from a hole in the wall. They were quickly fired by me and replaced with competent people. As far as returning your used oil. In Texas, by law, every oil change center is a collection center during normal business hours. They may charge up to $1.00 per gallon, but most don't. Autozone here still collects used oil for free. Almost every morning when I opened up our shop there was atleast 5 gallons sitting in front of our doors, *******s. My dad usually uses the old oil to kill weeds, but shhhh don't tell anyone.
Where does oil come from? THE GROUND. Just dig a hole and pour it in. It will find its way back home. Just joking. Don't freak out tree huggers. I don't really do that... I've taken it to auto zone before. Mostly however, I take it to my local recycling center which is 1/2 mile from my house. We don't have trash pickup around here, we haul it to a collection center. You can take metal, cardboard, oil, etc, etc....The only thing I can't seem to get rid of is carpet and tires. I have about 5 gallons outside right now that I need to take to the center. Don't tell, but I've also used it to start fires and recently I used it on a set of outdoor wooden steps I built. I mixed in a little used thinner and brushed it on. So far it seems to be damn water resistant. I also use old oil to wax my car before taking it to a hoity toity car show. Man, old black oil makes primer look good. In the hot sun, your car will smell like a busted transmission though. Seriously, I don't buy all that "I don't have a space to change it in"....or "I'm too busy" or whatever. Dude, if you "change oil all day long", then pull your friggen car in at the end of the day and do it where you work... Jeez. Of course other people are going to **** up YOUR CAR. What the hell do they care? Its not theirs. Change the oil yourself and cut out the BS.
OOOOooops! ha ha. I feel for you man, I've heard so many stories about oil places forgetting to refill the block with oil, not tightening the filter, using the wrong oil, not changing the oil at all....etc etc....that I'm just super paranoid about taking my car to anybody. Go back and make them fix it and watch them when they do it. Good luck.
im going to tomorrow after i get my check.i guess i'll go with regular ole 10w30 this time and try to get a free oil change for my van thrown in also..since they ****ed up and even charged me extra for the water they put in
its nobodys fault but your own.... it only takes a 5/8 wrench..... i just use one of the closeable used oil containers and just dump it when it gets full at kragen or the local mechanic.....
yes and no.i knew it wasnt the best thing.but it was all i had.the new manager lives next door and doesnt like us.if i got caught it would mean eviction.
i've seen lots of folks pull around to the side of autozone and advance and do an oil change right in the parking lot. i'm sure it pisses most of the managers off. there's always somewhere you can do an oil change. it's 15 minutes. less if you've got ramps. i gotta build something for the wife's new beetle as the old metal ramps are to steep and it drags the bumper before it get started up and pushes the ramps out. that car is a prime example why not to Quicky Lube or whatever it. there was a fresh oil change sticker of a few hundred miles when she got it(coupla years old). well because of weather i let it float on the hopes it was ok for 1500 or so. finally got a semi warm day(she got it in the middle of winter) so i decide to change it with what i like(mobil in import stuff) the plug is so stripped in the aluminum pan it takes me 40 minutes to get it and all the shavings out. live in fear as i thread in a one up plug as these pans crack if you look at them wrong. it's been ok for the 18 months she's had it. it still leaks a bit not matter what you do. you can't go more than one up and putting a new pan on ain't cheap($235 pan. $35 glue-putty weird sealer vw uses). i just deal with it marking it's territory and forget about it. she wants to trade it before 90k anyow which is only about 12k away. the girl i dated before her went to wally world for an oil change when she had moved away when we were spliting and the guy never put the plug back in. she started down the road and it quickly got hot and started running like **** turned around barely out of the lot goes back to the bay and there's her service guy cleaning up her oil from the floor. believe it or not they put the plug back in filled it with oil and she drove it like nothing ever happened for another year or so...ken....
Luckystiffy is right, we have people change all kinds of **** in the parking lot of the parts store Advance Auto parking lots when i blew up on me. Manager doesn't care as long as the car doesn't end up broke down in the parking lot for a week. We help people do the **** if we're not too busy. We've got a garage door in the back for some of those "special" out of towner situations where they're stuck and dont' know anyone. I can't count how many people's cars we've fixed in the parking lot and in the back, swapping out water pumps, putting on timing belts, Theres always at least one person wokring who knows how to fix about any problem that pops up. I just read all I typed and noticed it has nothing to do with the post.... My bad. yeah, you should've changed it yourself!
IF you don't have ramps, there's always the 'drive up a high curb with only the p***enger side wheels of your car on the curb. Lay in the gutter and you can get to your drain plug. We're lucky here, the garbage collectors offer plastic bottles and bags. We put our oil and filters in them, place them on the curb, and they take them away for us.
Take it to a friends house, but my god do it yourself. Maybe you could do it out of the service bay at work. I work at a VW dealership and see this probably once a week. One of the oil change places leaves out a plug, forgets oil, wrong grade, non synthetic, or whatever and it takes out a motor. Then when we tell the customer they're warranty is void, you get the picture. Find a way to do it. Lesson hard learned. Hindsight is 20/20. And all that good ****.... Luckystiff, I got 9 or 10 of those tubes of VW glue-puddy weird sealer stuff (tm) laying around. If you need some let me know... All it is is white silicone gasket maker. and those oil pans just went up from $120. Crazy.
ok,one is stupid cuz you ended up doin MORE work than if you did it yerself, and two and three,since you had to go to autozone anyways,you might as well grab some tools while yer at it and yer not SUPPOSED to change yer oil in places like apartment complexes and what not but i've seen guys basically rebuild front ends and let oil and antifreeze run all over the place for WEEKS on MULTIPLE cars and never get yelled at.especially if you know what yer doin and not makin a mess. just get one of those plastic tubs they sell at the 'zone and stick it under yer car till the thing's done.take all of what,5 min?like any landlord is gonna spot ya in that amount of time.and dont start cryin about all the tools ya need.what do ya need,a wrench and a filter wrench?waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah i cant change my own oil waaaaaaaaah.if yer too stupid to change yer own oil or take it to a respectable place,dont complain about the stupid people who work there. done with my rant,sorry creepy
Actually, On another forum I belong to, Ramp building forum, I read that someone used that on all of the structural lumber in their ramp, to prevent it from water damage.
I change mine in the street if I have to. My driver is a 2wd Suburban, so no need for ramps - I just reach under. When I'm done, I use a funnel and pour it into a bottle of some sort (sometimes the oil bottles even). I carry a couple in the truck and have a couple sitting around, never know what you might use it for - oiling hinges, need a quart in a pinch, a couple weeks ago I popped a head off a '68 Pontiac 400 to see how bad it was stuck. Wasn't bad, so I filled it up with some old oil to help protect it until I can finish getting it apart and sell the block out of the POS. (this thing is so rotty one side I need to grind off some of the bolt heads to get the cylinder head off.. 68 #15 heads aren't too desirable, mid-performance high compression). The kicker is this is a fairly fancy neighborhood, I have no room to keep cars and I am sure the neighbors are ****ping their pants at the trailer load of parts I have here until I go to deliver it Monday. But hell I don't care, there is no apparent law against having a car here - a couple years ago I kept one with no plates in the driveway for a couple of months. Screw 'em if they don't like it - like with the oil, its not like I pour it into the ground or anything. The trailer will be here a couple weeks then I'll take it back to the buddy I got it from, hopefully with a car on it. I've worked on about half a dozen cars out here over the years, changed motor mounts, water pumps, alternators, starters, rebuilt brake systems, etc. Why pay someone to do what you can do yourself? Although I did dump the leftover antifreeze into the woodchuck hole (shh don't tell) when I changed the radiator I blew out. But hell we're on city water and the lake 100 yards down the bank is so polluted with 100 years of industrial waste, a gallon or so of leftover antifreeze isn't going to make a whole lot of difference.
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