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Used to pull my drain plug with a breaker bar, now a $9 hand pump does it in 4 minutes
Back when I changed my own oil I would crawl under my truck with a 15mm wrench and a breaker bar, and one time in a snowy Walmart lot in Cheyenne I stripped the plug and had to pound a socket on it. Now I just shove a $9 hand pump down the dipstick tube into a 5 gallon bucket and I never touch the plug at all. My whole point is simple, I get almost every drop out without getting oil down my sleeve, and it takes about 4 minutes on a warm engine. The only thing I wonder about is whether leaving a little old oil behind hurts anything over 200k miles. Anyone here still pulling the plug on purpose, and if so why?
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emma_perry18h ago
Running a pump down the dipstick gets most of it but the crud that settles at the very bottom of the pan is what you're leaving behind, and over 200k that stuff can turn into sludge that clogs your pickup tube. Dropping the plug every few changes flushes that junk out the bottom where gravity actually takes it. So maybe pump it most of the time but pull the plug once in a while to see what's sitting in there.
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val_wilson18h ago
@emma_perry nailed it. Pump it every time if you want, but that plug needs to come out once a year at least. I pulled mine at 180k after years of top side only changes and got a half quart of black jelly sliding out first. Nasty stuff. That junk sits right at the bottom where the pickup lives, so of course it finds its way in. Two minutes with a wrench beats a new motor any day.
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