Today, 14th October I've had a morning in the garage and changed the oil & filter. I won't do a blow by blow account this time as I've recorded the process in detail before, but here are a couple of notes.
I always pre-fill the new filter so that it takes less time to build pressure. I also run the engine for a couple of minutes before draining the oil. This is simply to warm things over so that when I start it up with clean oil, it doesn't start from cold mode with high revs. Some people prefer to drain the old oil hot, but I prefer the warm oil method.
The old oil was surprisingly dark. It's been in there a year but not a great mileage, and no short trips. It wasn't quite as black as it looks here.
For the record - mileage is 17,406.
Oil is Mobil Super 3000 fully synthetic 5w-30. Sump bolt head is 15mm.
My second job this morning was to add spacers to the engine mountings to increase the ground clearance. I used two pieces of aluminium cut into a U shape which give a 4.55mm lift. I might add another 2.25mm spacer in time. It's a very simple job. Remove the lower nut - there's also a washer which may drop down. Then I screwed on an extended nut which I used to jack up the mounting using a scissor jack, then slotted in the spacer.
This is the spacer in place. The lower nut is 17mm. Sump clearance has increased from 79mm to 83.5mm (3&1/8" to 3&1/4"), not much but even a small increase is worthwhile.
That's all for today.
