When I was a teenager, I started working part-time for an auto mechanic named Charlie. I had no prior experience so my job was to clean parts. Once Charlie had taken something apart, I would clean up the various pieces to prepare it for potential new parts and reassembly. As I gained experience, Charlie gave me more difficult tasks. One day he asked me to change the transmission fluid in an automatic transmission.

I realized right away that there was no drain plug for the fluid so I asked Charlie how I was supposed to drain it. He explained that the easiest way was to roll under the car on a mechanics creeper and take out all the pan bolts except for two. Then arch my back so my chest was supporting the pan and take out the last two bolts. Then I was supposed to slowly relax to lower the pan and then roll out from under the car.

This worked great until I started lowering the pan. As soon as I relaxed and the pan tilted slightly one way, the fluid slopped to one side and spilled out all over me. I was drenched in a couple of gallons of transmission fluid. Charlie had been watching the whole process and thought it was the funniest thing ever. This was about 50 years ago, and I have changed transmission fluid many times since, but I have never used Charlie's method again.

Bob in Alabama

Here are a few tips that occurred to me while maintaining the family fleet over the winter:

   1. It is wise to carry an inexpensive valve core tool in the vehicle in case a valve core needs to be tightened. I made sure my wife's spare tire kit included a jack, lug nut wrench and air compressor, but I was still in trouble when a valve core in a snow tire unscrewed when I twisted off the plastic valve core cap while checking air pressure in all the tires. Ice, dirt or some mysterious force had stuck the pin in the Schrader valve to the plastic cap just long enough to loosen the valve and cause an air leak. Luckily, the car was at home when this happened.

Essential Items for Spare Tire Kit

   2. Speaking of wheel/tire changes, it is best to use a torque wrench to tighten lug nuts to the torque specification listed in the owners manual or repair manual (found under "Literature" in the RockAuto.com catalog). I recommended that my youngest daughter tighten her lug nuts so they were "tight but not so tight that you will not be able to loosen them if you have a flat." Several weeks later, she phoned from the side of the road to ask for advice on what to do about her car's strange shimmying. The front left (drivers side) lug nuts were loose. (Wheel rotation is most likely to loosen the lug nuts on the left side of a vehicle. That is why old Chryslers and some other brands have reverse threaded lug nuts/studs on the left side.)

Typical Torque Wrenches

   3. I put a lot of effort into picking out the perfect oil filter. I bet it will be in the top ten things I spent time on during my life. The final tally sheet will probably show something like I spent 2,000 hours brushing my teeth, 6,000 hours talking to my spouse and 12,000 hours picking out oil filters. Features like filter efficiency, case strength and gasket quality are obviously important. Nonetheless, after many decades of oil changes, the color of the oil filter case is what is most likely to put a smile on my face. (So far, only one engine in the family fleet has a cartridge type oil filter element that drops into a permanent plastic housing.)

It is so nice when the oil filter is orange, white, silver or some other high visibility color. For example, the 5.7L in my RAM 1500 has a small oil filter nestled in a forest of black steering rack parts. Look away for a few seconds, and the oil filter can just disappear amongst all the other black bumps and blobs. Dark colored oil filters get a quick blast of brightly colored spray paint before they go on that engine!

Tom Taylor,
RockAuto.com

To read more of Tom's articles, click this link and choose from story titles on the Newsletter Archives page.