Okay, so you want to take care of your car on another level huh? If this sounds like you, then you probably changing your own oil, right?
Changing engine oil is not a rocket science and every car owners must know how to change their car’s engine oil. It’s one of many responsibilities of owning a car! It is a simple drain and refill job that shouldn’t take a sweat.
Though most car manufacturers are doing their best to prevent car owners to do “DIY” jobs on their car to greatly discourage people from doing any preventive maintenance.
But this doesn’t mean that these car dealers look for your own benefits. They make changing oil almost like impossible so that car owners will have their cars serviced in the dealerships, hence preventing any DIY job opportunities.
And thanks to the power of the Internet and Youtube, people can simply search on how to do any preventive maintenance on their cars. So I guess, car manufacturers can’t do anything about this.
So if you are like me who are a DIY geek, then you must know the reasons why you should change your own oil!
You Can Choose Your Preferred Oil and Filter
Using your preferred oil is a big issue for most car enthusiasts and owners alike.
Most of the time when you bring your car into a dealership or auto shop, you don’t often have the luxury of using your preferred oil but highly depends on the dealership’s available oil brand.
So for example, you preferred or your manual says that your engine requires 5W30 oil (multi-grade oil), and the auto shop only have 5W40 and above, then you’ll have issues here.
Changing your own oil negates this big problem. Just purchase the oil that you like and never worry of using the wrong oil for your engine ever again!
Of course, the same goes when you are choosing the best oil filter for your engine. If you are using a fully synthetic, high mileage oil, then you need a performance filter that can compliment your oil. You can’t get this benefit if you rely on auto shops for a change oil job.
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You Can Completely Drain Your Old Oil
Changing your old oil means that you want to achieve complete drain, as you don’t want your fresh new oil from mixing with the old nasty oil.
This means that every drop really counts!
Changing oil in the dealership won’t give you this advantage. Their staff and mechanics are always on the go, meaning time is very valuable to them especially if they have tons of customers.
The result? Your old oil is not completely drained and they just mixed it with new oil. They do change oil jobs in just minutes!
You might argue that dealerships use pressurized air to fasten oil drain time. Well, this is a misconception to most car owners as you can’t simply use pressurized air when draining oil and expect a thorough drain (unless of course if they do this in at least 30 minutes, but they don’t).
Plus, using pressurized air can also give a negative effect on your engine as pressurized air also produce water vapors. So if your dealership don’t have water filtration system on their air compressors, then your engine will truly suffer!
So changing your own oil lets you drain your old fluid to its last drop.
Make Money from Your Used Oil
Most car owners don’t want to change their own oil because they don’t know how to get rid of their old oil. And if you are one of them, it is quite a puzzle if you are going to keep the old oil or just store it in your garage.
First off, storing your old oil can be dangerous as oil is a very hazardous chemical. It cannot be exposed to a running water or heat, so one thing to do for sure is how to get rid of your old oil.
But don’t be discourage as used oil isn’t a big problem at all!
Depending on the place you live in, there are auto shop (or even gasoline stations) who accepts used oil. Used oil can be recycled or even used in other industries. This makes oil truly an indispensable necessity product.
What’s great about recycling used oil is that, some shops will even buy your used oil so you make money in the process. You can’t get a single penny if you change your oil in a dealer or auto shop.
Use the Right Amount of Oil
This is one major issues when changing oil and most car owners neglect this fact.
Every engine has their own oil amount capacity, which helps keep the engine to function to its optimum performance.
Otherwise, filling your engine with less the required amount of oil or too much oil will give your engine various issues.
First, it will not perform well and will decrease its power. Second, it will produce tons of blowby gasses that will turn into carbons throughout the air intake and exhaust systems, not to mention gunk and sooth on your cylinders, cylinder walls, pistons etc.
Third, it will create a lot of pressure inside your engine, which shortens the life of engine parts like oil seals, shafts and many others.
So when you let other people do change oil for your car, you won’t be able to monitor how much oil is being poured into your engine.
Yes there is a dipstick to check the level. But most of the time, car owners would just ignore a couple of cm of excess oil from the full mark. The result, your engine is overfilled with oil.
If you do your own oil change, you can prevent overfilling your engine with oil and have the best performance out of your car!
Summary
There you have it! Those are some of the reasons why you should change your own oil!
Did these reasons encouraged you to do your own oil change? If yes, comment down below your car DIY experiences or if you have more change oil DIY ideas that you want to share with us!
Below is my video version of this topic, take note that this is in Tagalog language but as usual, it comes with an English subtitle! Enjoy!
