Making DIY oil changes easier . . . are these products reliable, though?

[BonzaiDuck]

I had a Fumoto (or look alike) in my old Toyota long time ago. It was convenient then since I lived in a townhouse and didn't want to do change on a ramp in shared parking. This device made it easy since I just slide a flat container under the car. Only complain was that it really slow down the flow of oil since the opening is smaller.
Fast forward, I'm too lazy to do DIY oil change anymore - not worth the hassle.

Like I said -- after I retired I chose to rely on a (trusted) mechanic. I'd schedule the car for an oil change every 3,000 miles, so I'd use one oil change annually as an excuse to "check the tranny, check the coolant, "tune up"*, find emerging problems -- recommend any needed work. (* -- I hadn't even learned that cars with "Engine Control Modules" or computers didn't need "traditional" tune-up attention, but no matter anyway. The proprietor/mechanic left meticulous notes about labor performed and parts required on the amended shop-order.)

Now the mechanic is retired and I've gone through an unsettling year of trial and error to find a new outfit, I figure I can do the oil changes easily myself -- saving a few bucks and doing as many changes as I want. The "trusted" repair shop can do more extensive work, like re-packing my wheel bearings -- to be done early this summer.

In this cautious dance between total reliance on a repair shop and the demands of DIY mode, there's a dimension of convenience which plays into it. Maybe I can schedule an oil change exclusively so I only have to wait an hour when I visit the repair shop; maybe not -- but I can do one myself in a half hour. If I can diagnose enough of the greater problems myself, I can either choose at that point to fix them myself or schedule the car for delivery to the repair shop so I get it back the next day (or the day after that, etc.) But given my other "life priorities", leaving the vehicle at the repair-shop for a day or more is an inconvenience to be avoided except for serious maintenance.

Getting more familiar with the Owner's and Factory Shop manuals helps in these decisions. They provide a chronological graph with shaded blocks for each and every item that will need attention over 100,000 miles -- better than relying on a repair-shop mechanic's judgment exclusively about what to do and when to do it.

It amounts to the same thing to see it this way. If I'm going to do something more extensive than changing fluids (such as replacing a Power-steering pump), I'll be inclined to take more than a day's time, since it will likely be the first time I've ever done such a thing. If it takes the repair shop just a few hours, I can have the car back in my garage that afternoon. But even if I choose to replace the differential axle lubricant front and rear, It will at most take me a couple hours. So I go forward, more familiar with my vehicle, less inconvenienced, saving a few bucks here and there, and avoiding the pickle I might be in for needing the car right away when I've left it disassembled overnight.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I had a Fumoto (or look alike) in my old Toyota long time ago. It was convenient then since I lived in a townhouse and didn't want to do change on a ramp in shared parking. This device made it easy since I just slide a flat container under the car. Only complain was that it really slow down the flow of oil since the opening is smaller.
Fast forward, I'm too lazy to do DIY oil change anymore - not worth the hassle.

I was too lazy for about the lasts 15 years through December 2018. I told an associate about my ValvoMax. He has a new car at age 72, sort of looks down on people who DIY their own cars. But I had to say -- you only need to slide a pan under the drain valve, drain -- then pour from the pan (should have a spout) into newly-emptied 5-quart oil jug, drive to AutoZone and "done". To me, that's easier than scheduling a visit to the shop and waiting in the customer lounge even if it has TEE VEE.

I'll insert a further discussion of my "fluids project". I've found all the overfill and drain bolts for my front and rear axles and transfer case. I would've planned to have the shop do it, but I've decided to drain and replace the lubricants myself. All the online help says "put the car under jack-stands front and rear and keep the car level". I've determined I don't need to do that: plenty of room for the collection pan, easy to access the bolt-plugs.

So someone will say "how you gonna pour that oil, when you can only get the bottle up to a horizontal position, and you'd need a funnel?" You buy a $30 extraction/dispensing tool:
Giant Oil Syringe

This is still hardly a couple hours work. My garage floor is clean.

So now, I'll farm out repacking the wheel bearings to the shop. They still get some business from me, I get more done for less, and -- more stuff just gets done . . .

On the extractor issue, I'd want such a thing for my GM 4L30-E automatic transmission. Available information indicates that some of these SUVs had main oil pans with drain plugs while others didn't. A picture of a replacement 4L30-E on a reman-transmission web-site shows that they prepare them with drain and overfill plugs. But I can only add fluid at the dip-stick port, and replacing fluid would either require a "flush" using the cooling lines to the radiator, or dropping the entire pan, replacing the filter and the gasket. Advice is reticent about flushing trannies over 100,000 miles, and not too encouraging about doing it after 60K. My shop guy says "we don't flush through the cooling lines", but it was done three times over the last 70,000 miles by my previous mechanic. I speculate that this hastened the demise of my radiator, which was starting to leak where one of the lines was attached.

Anyway, there's no way I can use an extractor. I can't fit any kind of hose down the dipstick port.

Fluid looks good after 30,000 miles since the last flush. It's working very well. The advice ranges widely: "After 100,000", "after 50,000". factory shop manual says "30,000" or "20,000 after harsh driving conditions". No harsh driving conditions. Not sure what to do about this, other than consult the shop. They'll have to drop part of the exhaust just to access the main pan.

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

I'm also in the Fumoto Court. I have used a Fumoto valve in my Tacoma for many years with no issues whatsoever. Plus it has a nipple for a hose so I drain it into a plastic 2 gallon jug so I don't have to clean a drain pan either.

Only "drawback" if you want to call it that is that it drains slower than just removing a plug. But that is a plus in my opinion as I get a chance to drink a beer while it drains.

Fumoto user and fan here. If you get a short one I recommend getting the snap-on barb drain accessory. It gives you a fully barbed surface to securely clamp some tubing to. It then just snaps on. This makes oil draining so much better because you put the drain line into your catch container and wait. A tube won't move and you don't need to adjust the catch like with a stream of oil changing its arc.
If you don't like waiting you get a really fast drain if you use an inexpensive 12V oil extractor pump. If you use oil flush before or add in some discount oil as you extract the used it's not much of a concern, not waiting for everything to drain as fully.

 

[RLGL]

I hav e found after being in the marine field, If you are going to use a hose attached to the oil pan, pull it out with a pump when the oil is at 60 F or above.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I hav e found after being in the marine field, If you are going to use a hose attached to the oil pan, pull it out with a pump when the oil is at 60 F or above.

Good advice.

I must update my experience on these matters, to absorb the related topic of transmission service. When I saw the shop manual talk of an "extraction" tool to remove fluid from the dipstick port, it also said "or drop the transmission oil pan" which requires dropping the exhaust forward of the catalytic converter and pre-converter. I misinterpreted what they said. The only reason you'd drop the main tranny oil pan would be a need for tranny filter replacement.

It now turns out that a $20 "transfer pump" obtainable from O'Reilly or AutoZone -- improved with some self-adhesive rubber hose tape and an appropriate length of 1/4" OD "ice-maker" plastic tubing from Home Depot -- makes for an easy dipstick-port extraction tool. My problem mentioned previously was the diameter of the hose or tube: 3/8" won't make it; 1/4" is just fine. You do the tranny flush just like a radiator flush. To get the dilution of old oil to your preferred level, you need to precisely measure how much ATF you can extract from the tranny sump/oil-pan in one iteration. In my case, 3.63 quarts of a total capacity 9.1 quarts is 40%. The complement of remaining fluid is therefore 60%, so the number of iterations to achieve 95% fresh fluid is 6 or a dilution to 0.6 ^6 -- 60% to the sixth power. To be practical, five iterations brings you to 92% fresh ATF.

I have now eliminated every fluid leak in my Trooper, and in the process, given it very good service. Previous tranny flushes were done by using the tranny cooling lines to the radiator. Disconnecting and fiddling with the cooling lines and connecting hosess damaged the cooling line fitting at the radiator, which began to show a minor but absolutely certain leak of antifreeze. So we replaced the radiator. All flushes from now on will be done with my $20 hand-pump.

Live and Learn!

PS The ValvoMax device uses the same sort of ball valves found in the Fumoto line. While the reviews are sparse (Amazon shows 8 contributors), they're all good. The advantage I see with it is the fallback feature of the screw-on cap with its own rubber gasket -- in the event the ball valve begins to fail. I'm optimistic, though. So replacing the ValvoMax with the Fumoto F106N is not likely to occur soon, thus no additional damage to the drain-plug threads. And -- of course -- you can install these devices with Permatex high-temp PTFE thread sealer and a custom-cut rubber-fiber (Fel-Pro) gasket. NOW I can tell how much oil is leaking from my engine main seal without confusing the leak with oil from the drain-plug. After about two weeks, the main seal leak barely leaves a thin film of oil on the drop-pan.

So I'm not too eager to treat the engine oil with Blue Devil Rear Main Seal Stop Leak. If I do eventually, I'll use a fraction of the recommended BD-ounces per quart, hope to see the leak disappear, and then give myself another easy oil change to purge the Blue Devil.