Patman
Staff member
quote:
Originally posted by cobravenom71:
Yeah, what I do is drain the oil, but leave the filter in place. When the oil is finished draining, if convenient I show the customer that nothing else is coming out, so that would normally be all that would come out on an oil change. I then have a tech hold a clean, transparent container next to the drain hole.
I then make sure that the oil dip-stick is fully seated, and block the end of the inlet for the air-cleaner and breather hoses with shop towels. This prevents any potential 'air escape paths'. Now, use a shop towel around a blow-gun, or a 1"thick, 3.5" diameter rubber disc with a 1/4" hole in the center to seat the rubber blow-gun nozzle(which I fabricated for just this purpose).Put the towel or disc on the oil fill hole(valve cover or seperate fill pipe)and put the tip of the blow-gun in and let her rip!
You will be amazed at the crappy, cruddy 'stuff' that comes out. And a lot of it too! In my experience ( I've done this literally thousands of times on customer's cars), you will always get at least a 1/2 quart of sludge out, sometimes even a quart!
After about 1 to 2 minutes of this, I will usually put the oil cap on, and blow some more air through the dip-stick tube. This also gets a little more out. The dip-stick part is especially effective on older Ford vans, the ones where the dip-sticks and the inside of the tube get filled with rust and crud from condensation. This is a really effective and easy way to get rid of most of it.
When I first started doing this about 15 years ago, lots of people thought I was nuts."Your gonna' blow all the seals and gaskets!" they said. I figured if an oil pump operates around 50-70 psi at cruise, How could I possibly build more pressure than that in an engine with a big open hole in the bottom of it?
Anyway, I have never had one, single problem from doing this. In fact, great word of mouth from happy customers has sent me a lot of extra business over the years.
Incedentally, one of the better success' with this technique is with Mitsubishis. At around 20-30,000 miles, some Mitsu 4-cylinders will sometimes develop a 'tick' at idle, and will never go away.
This 'air-flush' has silenced that 'tick' on dozens of cars sent to my stores.
Instead of using a flush machine, we just use a pour-in cleaner with the air-flush and charge aywhere from $20 to $40 for the service.
The flush machine service usually retails for $89 to over $150 depending on where you get it done.
Same results. A lot less expense for the customer. No equipment to buy.Happy customers.
Win, win, win!
Even so, I would be very interested in hearing others opinion of this.
