Zero Drip Oil Changes (from Miatanet forum)

[Graeme H]

I've just lifted the following text from the miatanet forum. I tried it this evening, and it works soooo well. Not a drop anywhere!...

"I've had an NA for about 3 years now, and I thought I'd share the method I came up with to get at the oil filter and change it without puking a bunch of oil down the block every time. One of my pet peeves is messy oil changes.

What I did was cut a length of cardboard out of a large shipping box. The cardboard is cut about 6" wide, and is 25" long on one side and 22" on the other. This makes a long peice, with one end cut square, and one at a 30 degree angle across the end. The cardboard is cut so that you can easily bend it into a semicircle across the short 6" width. When you do this, you have a nice chute made out of cardboard.

What you do with the chute is this ... crank the steering wheel to the left all the way. Go around to the right side of the car, and look up through the hole in the inner fender panel. You can see the oil filter. Put the chute through the hole in the fender panel, angled end first, and push it in so that the angled end of the chute butts up against the block, under the oil filter. The chute will try and spring open, but it's trapped by the surrounding stuff and can't move. It's held in place. Now, position your oil drain pan under the chute, and unscrew the oil filter from the top side of the engine. The oil from the filter will run down the chute and into your pan. You can (gently) drop the filter into the chute, and remove it with the chute when you pull the chute out of the inner fender well. I prefer to leave the chute in place until I put the new filter in, to catch any stray drips that occur after the old filter is removed.

I've used this method the last 5 or 6 times I've done my oil and filter change. It's fast and clean."

Thanks to Mike for this. Here is the link to the rst of the topic...
http://forum.miata.net/cgi-bin/ultimate ... 813#000018


Graeme H

http://miata.cardomain.com/id/britracinggreen