Post your Dumbest oil change, lets hear the truth.

Status
Not open for further replies.
I have missed the drain pan on more than 1 occasion, accidentally put the used oil filter back on, stepped in the full drain pan, put the wrong oil in the car, had a Quick lube strip the drain plug on my 99 Suburban (new oil pan). But by far the worst oil change nightmare happened to my friend who had his wife take his BMW 750il to the BMW dealer for oil service. She spent too long at the mall shopping with her friend and missed the appointment so went to a quick lube instead. The idiots there cross threaded the oil drain bolt into the pan and only got it about 1/2 way in and left it that way. When finished she proceeded to get on the interstate to go home and ran the engine dry and seized it. (I believe it had about 25,000 miles on it)
33.gif
No warranty coverage as she had it towed to the dealer who found the cross threaded plug. Rebuilt engine was almost $10k. He now changes his own oil.

That happened several years back and I do think he is just now speaking to her.
 
Last edited:
88 Ford festiva stick shift 500 miles. First oil drain, drain trans by mistake. Can't figure out how to put back in. Wanted to put back in by dipstick tube, dealer mechanic said wrong. Had towed to dealer cost over 80 bucks. Bought shop manual for 100 bucks, found out I was right mechanic gave bad information.
Found brand new oil filter in box, in the grocery store parking lot. Same filter my car used. Looked good, put on next oil change, leaked like sieve. Nothing is ever free.
 
First oil change on a car after being hired to work in a WM TLE back in 2007. didn't realize the bulk oil gun was presurized - though it was more or less gravity-fed, and just came out gently.

Put the hose in a shallow oil fill hole, and cranked the trigger on full. Nozzle locked open, lifted out of the hole, and sprayed 5W-30 Pennzoil all over the car, me, the guy next to me before I could shut it off.

They were all laughing so hard they couldn't help me clean up, or even speak. After that, i was one of the slowest guys putting oil in cars - I just dribbled it in.
 
When I first got hired at VIOC I was pouring the oil into a Jeep that had a breather hose go from just below the oil fill over to the air filter housing. I was unaware that if you poured the oil in too fast it would overflow into the air filter. Customer got a free air filter that day.
 
Years ago as a newbie tire buster and oil change monkey at a now defunct discount chain, I drained the oil and removed the filter from a brand new Mustang II. I replaced the drain plug and got called to the parking lot to collect shopping carts. Came back, filled the car with oil and promptly pumped 4 qts of QS 10w-30 on the floor. I forgot to put the new filter on! Getting distracted could have been disastrous. Luckily my quick thinking partner shut it down before damage was done. Took me an hour to clean up the car and the shop floor.
 
I had a beat to [censored] Chevy Lumina as a teen with the first gen 3.1 motor that started to have bad oil pressure. Ran it on 20w-50 for awhole year before I sold it to a kid who a month later had the sub frame upfront rust out and fall out while going down the road. Dumb as heck since the oil was about like frozen tar in January, but it held together.

My friend's mom had a Fiero with the 2.8 in it. She let it go 15k miles on dino Castrol GTX. When she finally drained the oil it looked clumpy. How that thing survived is beyond me to this day.
 
Forgot to put the oil cap back on my 88 Mitsu pickup. Did an OC with Castrol GTX HM and it splattered all under the hood.

Used Castrol GTX 20W50 in my 01 Toyota Tundra.

Forgot to install gasket on drain bolt.
 
The filter is easy...cut it. I've had a few gruesome calls from folks requiring "assistance".

That said...MUCH EASIER SAID than DONE!
 
Well, this isn't about an oil CHANGE, but it is about oil.
At a previous place of employment, we had an employee who saw an ad for an oil filter crusher and he had to have it. Except he knew better than to ask the boss to buy one as the money (at least for something like that) was tight.
So.....he built his own.
Actually, he did a pretty good job and it even had the "spikes" built into it so that it would pierce holes in the filter to relief pressure as the filter is being crushed. It was made to work with a 20 ton air-powered press that we had in the shop. Now remember that when you are crushing used oil filters, they have oil in them and all this oil was falling into a large catch pan beneath the press. It was working and most of these crushed filters were about a 1/2" flat.
We had several hundred oil filters that needed disposing, and somehow I got roped into helping him crush all these. We had probably done about 200+ these and by that time the pan that caught the oil escaping from all these filters had gotten fairly full. I'm still not sure exactly how it happened, but the thick metal plate that the filters rested on slipped out of the air press and right into the big pan of oil. Of course, I was wearing most of it.
He was leary of it after that and I decided I didn't want anything to do with it ever again, so it was retired. I still think he owes me a change of clothes.
 
My most recent oil change! I put dino 5W30 in right before winter dumb! That is my dumbest ever. My Dad once left the drain plug out and put new oil in it and watched drain down the pavement before he realized what he had done!
 
I just changed the oil in my snowblower...while I drained the old oil I realized and remembered how I changed it in the spring. I was wondering why the the oil looked so new and clean.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top