leftride

iTrader: (1)

I know the whole oil change thing has been beat to death and here I go adding to it. My main question is how are you guys removing your oil filter so oil doesnt go everywhere? the main thing is that it gets on the plastic underbody panel and is hard to clean out.

Second and this sounds dumb, but I have a hell of a time tring to read my dipstick, I do the whole procedure, take it out, clean if off, stick it back in and then pull it out and check it, but it is pretty hard to see how high the oil goes up, I can see it on the bottom below the first hole, and I see it in the first hole, but I cant really see much more other than a little oil on the edge that leads up to the second hole. I have checked oil in other cars and never seemed to have a problem, but I guess I must just be

bob shiftright

Yeah! I just noticed the oil filter location! Some Japanese engineer's sense of humor, I guess!

(At least they didn't mount the oil filter upside-down as on the Porsche 944! The German engineer's sense of humor is even worse!)

I might try making a urinal-sort of oil filter recepticle by cutting out an empty milk bottle or OJ carton, unscrewing the filter and collecting as much of the mess as possible, then tossing carton and oil filter together.

As for the oil, synthetic oil is clearer than dino-juice, but it will become darker and hence easier to see as it gets dirty.

DEVO

The engineers of the hybrid did a great job of placing the oil filter. Not only is it easy to reach but it's completely vertical. So no oil mess.

About the dipstick... I have the same problem with the hybrid as well. Seems that they could have put grooves in the area between the dots to capture more oil and make it easier to read. i have to check about 3 times to make sure I'm ok. 0W-20 is hard to read.