phone call, help i have an oil leak

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Asp

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So my niece just called me and said I have an oil leak pleas grab a 17mm wrench and walk to the gas station behind you..
I'm like what, where are you @.. ok

so I get there and she is pouring in the 3rd qt of oil after driving 6 miles
too paint the picture my niece is 4"10 and Not over 100 lbs with 3 little kids in tow and the puppy.
all packed into dodge mini van.

well not packed as they are pretty roomy

any way she is standing there in an oil soaked t shirt, so I feel the need to ask who did the oil change.
well I did she says, ben doing it for the past 5 years, still shacking my head she starts the van and the oil is running out.
so I ask did the old filter come off with the gasket? she gives me that look..I don't know.

hmm what are the chances, I mean I have heard of it but in my 50+ years have never seen it, so laying under the van I spin off the filter emptying the gas station of paper towels the filter is in my hand and the second Gasket is laying on the ground.

Impressive

not the Gasket but my niece not being afraid to do her own oil change, that's the Start of a motor head.
I can build from that


go Girl
 
yup, my hats off to her

I had a buddy who used to have a dodge shadow or something and he had an oil leak
we pulled the filter off and sure enough, there were two seals on there


the reason you as a gearhead have never seen it is most likely because you make the old filter kiss the new one before you install it to get a thin coat of oil on the seal
 
true..so true , or even the finger tip in the new oil bottle too coat the new seal
 
That's actually a mistake even the seasoned mechanic can slip up and make. It's not too hard to do. If you are tired, in a hurry, distracted......we're all human.
 
Seen this happen a few years ago :glasses7::glasses7: Not the oil seal , A young lady that changed her own oil :cheers::cheers:
I think you are right Asp :glasses7: Gear head in the making !! X2 You go girl :cheers:
 
RustyRatRod said:
That's actually a mistake even the seasoned mechanic can slip up and make. It's not too hard to do. If you are tired, in a hurry, distracted......we're all human.
Click to expand...

You bet. "In a previous life" when the oil-change shops got started, I sold auto parts. A couple of those shops had to buy engines for customers.........oil filter mistakes, wrong filer, not tight and fell off, etc etc
 
we need more like her to join the club. maybe if she has time for a class here and there at a community college automotive program.

She already has a jump start being brave to dive in.
 
Great to hear another gal doing her own work and I bet she'll always remember to check and see if the seal came off. When I was in my early 20's I dated a gal that did a lot of her own work. I actually went out with her 4 or 5 times before I even knew it. One day I went over to see her and she had just bought a 71 Duster and was in the middle of tuning up the 318. Blew me away cause back in the mid 80's I had never saw a gal interested in doing that before.
 
More women need to learn the automotive basics. Even if they don't factually work on their own cars,just the knowledge helps them make better life/financial/quality of life decisions
 
That's the first thing that they teach you when we did the 10 minute oil changes.

ALWAYS CHECK THE OLD FILTER TO MAKE SURE THE GASKET DIDN'T STICK TO THE MOUNTING SURFACE....

OIL THE GASKET ON THE NEW FILTER BEFORE INSTALLING...

Keep teaching her... She'll learn...
 
It IS hard to do because you should be cleaning the gasket mounting surface of the filter mount with a clean rag to remove any old oil that has been running over it from removing the filter!! Not saying she should know this, but she should know this!! My hat is off to her for diving in and doing her own work, just needs to make sure she checks every detail!! That's where uncle comes in!!!! :)
 
fishy68 said:
Great to hear another gal doing her own work and I bet she'll always remember to check and see if the seal came off. When I was in my early 20's I dated a gal that did a lot of her own work. I actually went out with her 4 or 5 times before I even knew it. One day I went over to see her and she had just bought a 71 Duster and was in the middle of tuning up the 318. Blew me away cause back in the mid 80's I had never saw a gal interested in doing that before.
Click to expand...

I knew girl like that once
she was a friend of mine and she came over regularly
(I think I was 16 or so, she musta been about a year younger)
one day in out working on the garage and im putting a big bore kit and larger carburetor on my dirtbike
I was just tightening up the head as she walked into the garage
I kept wrenching as were chatting and at some point I asked he to hand me the intake manifold (this bike had one of those cast aluminum elbows on it)
she took one look at the mess that was my workbench and picked up the manifold I asked for
she looked it over and said, you know, this would run a whole lot better if you remove the casting flash and port it a bike

I dang near tipped over
 
My DD is a 2008 chevy HHR. Cheap car, gets good mileage, anyhow, the filter setup the filter housing is cast as part of the engine block, and theres a fiber plastic threaded cap with an o ring. The filter element is clipped to the inside of the cap. The cap has a large nut cast into it. Special 3/8" drive metric super shallow socket like 1/4" deep to get the cap off. The oil change just before this last oil change i was in a hurry. I changed the oil tightened the cap with a new o ring, and jerked my 3/8 extension and wrench off the engine.

Doing a tool inventory a few days later i couldent find this special socket. Went oh well got to buy another one. 3,000 miles later i popped the hood to do another oil change, the socket was still on the filter cap.

I work in the airline industry, and have always made a habit of inventorying my tools every time i am done with a job, because a lost tool in an aircraft rolling around can jam flight control linkages and such causing a crash. Tools are not allowed to be MIA. We have opened aircraft back up looking for tools people have had missing out of their tool boxes. This costs time and money, however the alternative can be deadly.

I was happy i found my chevy ecotec filter socket, however i quickly realized had it fallen off on the freeway somebody behind me could have gotten seriously injured from it.

It seems like a small thing to inventory your tools right after your done wrenching, or in a hurry, but a tool falling out of your car while your driving could cause a wreck.

I now take a bit more time, and try not to be rushed even when doing quick car mtx on the daily drivers.
 
I changed oil on a car once and had an oil leak right at start up. Pouring out from the filter. My first thought was the double gasket problem. But I grabbed the old filter and the gasket was on it. So I unscrewed the new filter to see two gaskets! Who ever changed it last left the old gasket on and it didn't leak for 4K miles. Just my luck.
 
I always put grease on the gasket of a new filter.

makes it a lot harder coming off but I have never had one leak.
 
RustyRatRod said:
That's actually a mistake even the seasoned mechanic can slip up and make. It's not too hard to do. If you are tired, in a hurry, distracted......we're all human.
Click to expand...

Did it once.

Luckily I had only gotten the car backed out of the bay before I realized I was leaving an oil streak on the floor. Back on the lift it went.

Some things you learn from.

When I worked at one of the local Ford dealerships one of my fellow techs and I were talking about these kind of mistakes and placing bets on when the rookie, doing his internship from a local tech school would forget the drain plug. It happened the next day. We've all been there at least once and the list of bone head mistakes goes on and on. Once you do something like that you'll never do it again.

Like leaving the rotor button off and wondering why the car won't fire. Get back under the hood and see both rotors buttons laying on the inner fender.
 
ramenth said:
Did it once.

Luckily I had only gotten the car backed out of the bay before I realized I was leaving an oil streak on the floor. Back on the lift it went.

Some things you learn from.

When I worked at one of the local Ford dealerships one of my fellow techs and I were talking about these kind of mistakes and placing bets on when the rookie, doing his internship from a local tech school would forget the drain plug. It happened the next day. We've all been there at least once and the list of bone head mistakes goes on and on. Once you do something like that you'll never do it again.

Like leaving the rotor button off and wondering why the car won't fire. Get back under the hood and see both rotors buttons laying on the inner fender.
Click to expand...

I did the double gasket mambo,once... I paid for the bearings, rod & mains.. Mistubushi makes good steel crankshafts...
 
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