Nice post. It helped me thru my first oil change nicely. One thing to make it a bit more foolproof. Add the 1/2 quart of oil as the first bottle and then add the 8 full quarts. This would help to prevent getting on "autopilot" and dumping in 9 quarts.
On another subject, my owners manual specifies 8 different Mercedes approved oils for my 2002 E320 in a wide variety of viscosities meeting MB spec 229.1 or 229.3. For my next change I'm going to try the Mobil 1 15W-50 instead of the 0W-40 since I live in San Diego and never go anywhere cold.
When I changed the oil and oil filter, it was very tight and very difficult to push the oil filter to the correct position on the o/f canister. (I did lub the canister rod and oil filter before I put them together. It did not help.)
Eventually, the oil filter was pushed to the correct position by torquing the o/f canister to 25 NM. (After toqquing the o/f canister, I removed the canister and inspected the filter and assembly.)
Does anyon have the same experience?
(I now wonder what difficulty I will have when I remove the oil filter next time when I change oil. Probably cutting the filter...etc)
cool writeup! i'm sure the writeup took longer than the actual procedure. lol
oil change on my 97 E420 is slightly more involved as i have to take the engine cover & air filter housing off to access the oil filter, but no biggie.
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Gone but not forgotten:
2003 Honda S2000
1999 BMW 540i sport
1995 BMW M3
I just completed an oil change on a '96 e320 using gregs210's DIY pictorial as a guide; I found it extremely helpful. I thought I would augment it with a few points for any '96 drivers out there:
The oil filter assembly will be found near the back of the engine compartment, just right of center. Once unscrewed, the weight of the saturated oil filter will probably cause it to drop out of the filter assembly (possibly making you think something had fallen into the housing), so don't worry. Also, the '96 filter assembly only requires one O-ring, so don't try frantically shaking the other rings out of the box the filter came in; they are not there.
On another note, the '96 has its drain plug on the DRIVER'S SIDE, so plan accordingly. I used a ramp under the right rear tire and the jack on the front right body mount. This allowed me to raise or lower the front of the car after the oil stopped draining to determine the right pitch/yaw to get those last few drops out.
Nice write up and excellent pictures. I'll offer one additional hint. You can avoid crawling around under the car and the mess of draining the oil from below if you use one of the vacuum oil extractors such as a LiqiVac or TopSider. You can drain the oil from above throught the dipstick tube. Just pump up a vacuum in the device, slip the drain tube down the dipstick tube until it hits the bottom of the crankcase, open the valve and suck the oil out. There have been several tests that show that it removes as much or slightly more oil than draining from below. The only down side is that it take a little while longer to vacuum extract the oil than draining from below. But that is compensated for by the less time it takes to clean up when drainig from below. The LiqiVac or TopSider aren't very expensive---$35 to $40---and you can use them to change oil in your lawnmower or almost any gasoline engine except most motorcycles and ATV's.
When I changed the oil and oil filter, it was very tight and very difficult to push the oil filter to the correct position on the o/f canister. (I did lub the canister rod and oil filter before I put them together. It did not help.)
Eventually, the oil filter was pushed to the correct position by torquing the o/f canister to 25 NM. (After toqquing the o/f canister, I removed the canister and inspected the filter and assembly.)
Does anyon have the same experience?
(I now wonder what difficulty I will have when I remove the oil filter next time when I change oil. Probably cutting the filter...etc)
It's designed to be a very tight fit, otherwise in high-pressure/volume situations oil could leak by instead of being forced through the filter media.
That said, I've never had it not seat when you push it on (it does take some work, make sure you're pushing as close to the center of the filter as you can, if you just grab the outside of the filter it will definitely hang) but I can't imagine that there is anything wrong with having it most of the way and then using the re-installation process to complete the job. I guess the problem with that would be you then have to unscrew it again just to ensure it seated all the way.
Take care and enjoy the ride,
Greg
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