One of my earliest posts on this forum dealt with my first oil change, which was (more or less) an unmitigated disaster. The post was cut and pasted from an email that I sent my father-in-law, a retired farmer from Nebraska who has always owned/worked on Detroit iron vehicles, including autos, trucks, tractors, earth-moving equipment, etc. (I doubt that he even
sees a Porsche more than once every few weeks---months?) Anyway, an excerpt of that email/post (BTW, I also own a Camry, and Colin & Nathan are my sons):
Started by getting a bigger drain pan to catch the oil: it's a hard plastic, self-enclosed affair, with a
shallow funnel arrangement at the top that sends the used lubricant down through a hole in the center,
to be collected in the hold below, which has a spout for pour-off later. The problem arose as I removed
the drain plug from the oil pan (it comes out with a 8 mm Allen wrench---German engineers have to do
EVERYTHING different it seems). Well, it was a quite a bit hotter than I realized and, as I exclaimed
"Ouch" I more or less simultaneously dropped the plug. Ordinarily (as in a Camry oil change) this
wouldn't have been a problem. In this case, however, as I witnessed the oil drain pan funnel (which only
holds maybe a quart) quickly filling up, I suddenly realized that the dropped plug fell INTO THE FUNNEL
(wanted to use a different f-word there) HOLE, more or less blocking it completely. It being entirely too
hot to reach down into the pool of oil to dislodge the somewhat wedged-in drain plug, I haplessly watched
as 9 quarts of nasty used motor oil formed an ever expanding pool beside me and ran on down the
driveway. Colin and Nathan got to watch.
The resulting lake was approximately 4 ft x 8 ft in size, and was undoubtedly one of the nastier
clean-ups I have ever tackled.
Good times...
Threaded Mode
