I recently bought an 04 Acura TL with about 155K. Car has been completely maintained by the service department at an Acura dealership. PO did a good job keeping up with all the needed maintenance.

I have always been a DIY type of person. I decided to do an oil change today, and immediately ran into a problem. The drain plug has been stripped/rounded off. To make matter worse, the person who tighten the bolt on the last oil change must have either use an impact gun to tighten it down, or had the power of "The Hulk". Definitely way way over the 29ft/lb specs.

Anyway, I had to make a run to Sear to get the "bolt-out" remover. Had to use a hammer to smack the ranch with the bolt-out socket.



The oil filter was on pretty tight too, but I managed to remove it will less effort than the drain plug. I bought a new drain plug with a copper crush washer to replace this bolt...


I know I will not have to worry about the same problem on the next oil change!

VT

 

Others carelessness is the reason i DIY everything that I possibly can (Not even car related, but everything I possibly can).

I do all the work on my TL. And its crazy how much reputable places charge for labor


The more you hang around here, the more you will learn about how to take car of your car. Good start OP

 

That really suck, VH. I'm glad you were able to take care of it though....

 

The drain plug may not have been over-torqued, esp. if the oil pan threads look OK, as they are aluminum. If the plug is seriously over-torqued, the pan threads are easily damaged.

What happens is the aluminum washer that I see in your picture, galls (cold welds) to both the oil pan and the drain plug. Yes, I have an RDX, but it uses the same drain plug and washer and torque spec (29lbs). If you have used a copper washer as a replacement, as you stated, it is much less likely to 'weld' to the pan, and will be much easier to remove next time.

My Chevy specs a drain plug torque of 18ft-lbs, which is what I use on my RDX, but only because I safety wire the drain plug (overkill I suppose, but I used to safety wire my bikes). You can find my thread on safety wiring in the DIY & FAQs RDX section, if interested.

The rounded corners on your drain plug are more likely the result of using an open-end wrench to remove the plug. Again, an impact wrench is more likely to strip the pan threads, which is what happened to my Chevy (courtsey of the dealer).

 

Well stated sir.

 

Wow that makes me think twice about the next Time I take mine to a dealership.

 

I just changed the oil in my wife's '10 Rav4 for the first time, (Toyota gave 2 years of free oil changes), and experienced the same thing - both the drain plug and oil filter (which is plastic) were screwed on crazy tight. I needed to hammer the wrench to loosen them.

Maybe it's a dealer thing designed to keep us from DIYing?

 

Or get one of these:

http://www.qwikvalve.com/fumoto-f-106-valve.html

with this

http://www.qwikvalve.com/fumoto-adl-106-adapter.html .

No wrenches needed.

 

For your Wife's rav 4 which is a cartridge style filter you should buy an oil filter wrench that fits the cap size. If you search online you will know what I am referring to and will easily find the cap size.

In most cases oil filters will not spin off easily even though they are only to tightened by hand when installed. For spin on type oil filters I use this tool to remove it if I can't muscle it by hand


I rarely have a drain plug that is hard to remove. When changing your oil your engine should be warm to hot which will make it easier to remove the drain plug and the filter. Also the oil will drain a lot faster, just be aware of the j pipe.

 

I went down to the Toyota dealer and bought their wrench. (the you-tube how to said it was a Toyota-only size - which was B.S.) It magically sticks to all filters so tightly that I need to pry it off with a screwdriver. Thanks for the suggestion on a better tool - I'll take a look.

I've also got a '99 Camry 4 cylinder where the oil filter is up high in the front next to the exhaust manifold. Removing that one hot w/o asbestos gloves is almost out of the question. Also - I need to figure out how to do it without spilling oil down the motor.

 

Seems a little "nit-picky", I could see if they jacked your car up- forgot to put caps back on, put wrong fluids in the proper reservoirs, etc like you hear about those quick change places. But if your car has been serviced by the dealer for almost 10 yrs and the worse thing you can find is a deformed bolt, I'd say you weren't too bad off. Who knows, the next time they got that car in for an oil change they might have replaced the bolt for free.