What follows is Mike's (anal retentive?) guide to changing the oil in a VR6 engine. Someone please preserve it, I took a while writing it, but I think it covers everything. Feedback would be appreciated, of course! Jan, we doubtless have something exactly like this already that makes this whole dissertation redundant, right?
You will need:
Run the car for a while to warm the oil, doing this will cause it to run out of the pan and filter much faster. Wait a few minutes after turning the car off, of course, to let the oil cool enough to not burn you... this is about 15 minutes or so, I guess.
Remove the oil-cap from the top of the engine, so that the oil will drain better.
Put the oil receptacle under the oil filter. Take your 8mm hex wrench and unscrew the small aluminum plug at the bottom of the oil filter cover, and let the oil drain out of there and into your receptacle for a while, 15 minutes. If you don't wait this long, when you take the filter cover off there will still be a bunch of oil left in there, and it'll get all over you.
When oil has stopped dripping from the plug, take that big socket and loosen the plastic filter cover. remove it, and take out the paper filter element.
Use the small screwdriver (or basically any small item capable of grabbing that o-ring) remove the rubber o-ring from the plastic filter cover. Take your new one and oil it up in the oil that you recently drained from the oil fiter. Place the new o-ring onto the plastic filter cover the way the previous one was.
Take your brand new oil filter that you paid megabucks for and attach it to the plastic filter cover... it should click into place. Take the aluminum plug and screw it back in there. It's just made out of aluminum, so don't screw it in too hard or you'll do ugly things to the screw-threads.
Now take your whole filter/cover/plug assembly and screw it back into place. Wipe excess oil from the area, so that sand and other uglies won't stick there later. Make sure to get the oil off the hoses that VW so nicely placed right in the way there.
Part one of your job is finished.
Part two is just like draining the oil from any other car, slide under the car, position the oil recepticle under the oil-pan bolt, grab your 19mm or 3/4 inch wrench and take the bolt off. If you've waited long enough after running the engine, you should be able to remove the bolt by hand without scorching your fingers... the bonus of this is that the bolt won't fall into your oil-receptacle-- forcing you to fish for it.
Wait a while as the oil drains. It's a good time for you to towel all that oil that you got on your hands while fishing around in the hot oil, looking for the bolt. :) Remember to remove the old brass (copper?) bolt-gasket/washer from the oil pan bolt.
When the oil is all drained outta there, put a brand new brass (copper?) gasket/washer on the bolt, and screw it back into the pan. Make sure the bolt is relatively tight, but don't kill it with the wrench; you shouldn't really need to lean on the wrench. Wipe all oil from the bolt and the bottom of the pan, you'll get a chance later to see if it's leaking.
Now, pour five of your six quarts of Mobil-1 15W50 into the crankcase, via that hole VW has placed in the top of your engine. Replace the oil-cap on the engine, get into your car and run the engine for a minute or so. Listen with avid interest as the oil fills the filter and the valve-lifters pressurize. Try to ignore the oil light as it tells you you have no oil in your engine, it will (should!) go out in a few short seconds.
Stop your engine, and as the oil drains back into the pan, take the oil you just removed from your engine and pour it into the five empty mobil-1 bottles. If you run out of bottles to put the old oil into... Hmm, I don't know, put the rest into a plastic milk-carton or something. Go into your apartment and have lunch, or take the old oil off to the recycler.
After lunch (about 30 minutes), come out and take a look at the oil level in your engine, via the dipstick. Take it out once, clean it off, stick it back in there, take it out and look at the level. It should be very low. Remove the oil-cap, take your last new quart of Mobil-1, and pour it into the oil-filler hole, periodically checking the oil level on the dipstick in the same fashion as described above. When you get close to the top of the textured region of the dipstick, cap your Mobil-1 and put it in the back of your car to use in case of some horrible oil-loss emergency. Replace the cap on your engine.
The next time you go driving somewhere for a long enough period of time to get the engine and oil hot (i.e., more than 10 minutes), after parking the car, take a look under there at that oil pan bolt. You should be able to see it from the front end of the car if you get your eyes down close enough to the ground. If there's oil on the bolt, you need to tighten it a little more.
There, you're done. Was it harder or easier than you thought? :)
Mike Voorhis (mvoorhis@wpi.edu)
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