Balog
Well-known member
Recently moved out of an apartment back into a house so I can change my own oil again. Looking at the vac pumps that **** the oil out to reduce the mess. Anyone use them, and if so what kind would you recommend?
Many modern cars have no dipsticks. There's an electronic oil-level sensor in the pan that takes over the duties of a conventional dipstick. Normally you have to make sure engine has been warmed up and the car will tell you to sit with the engine running for about a minute on level surface.
So with that being said, these new cars have no dipsticks and thus you cannot vacuum out the oil on them. Gotta crawl under and drain the old-fashioned way yadidimean?!
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If you want something like this to do oil changes on a car, get one with an electric vacuum pump. ___
12 volt electric kit (click here)
I have a Pela 6000. It will hold 6 liter. I use it for small engines primarily. Be aware these are manual pumps - you have to continually pump them to extract oil. I would stroke it 5~8 times to get a strong vacuum and watch the flow until it died then stroke it again. My Pela draws around 1.5 oz per minute.
I just did a 17 hp with 48 ounces and it took around 30 minutes of (fairly) steady pumping to extract all the oil.
Shop around, ask around. This is just my experience![]()
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Very tiny percentage of cars have that. Some Mercs and BMWs.
I thought many of the asian cars started electronic measurement in the past 5+ years, of course the big 3 are far behind except probably the fiat Jeeps. Almost every BMW over the past 12+ years have had it, add the Mercs, Audis & VWs, and thats no small percentage.
Very tiny percentage of cars have that. Some Mercs and BMWs.
Wow well I guess there is no reason for the wife to run the car out of oil anymore.
Circa 1990 Honda Preludes for sure (and some other Hondas maybe) had a little power steering pump fitted to their manual transmissions where you'd expect a speedometer gear drive to be. If you can find and swipe one at a junkyard you can simply chuck one in a drill, add two hoses of the length you want, and pump about anything liquid. Forwards or backwards, they don't care. They aren't terribly fast but they do the job. I once pumped 40 gallons of gasoline out of an RV with one. Took a while. Next week pumped the fluid out of an automatic transmission through the dipstick tube. I like mine so much I picked up a second one from a Pick-N-pull type junkyard. Counter guy said: "Ummm. Three dollars?"
Not having a dipstick seems pretty dumb to me. I've run into a Jaguar that shut itself down and wouldn't run because a wiring issue caused it to incorrectly think the crankcase was empty. Another Jaguar happily ran with no oil at all until the engine seized. The oild check display showed it was full and fine even after the engine hari-kari'd. Maybe other manufacturers are doing a better job.