Oil change mistake

The second gens are the easiest oil filters I have ever owned. Sometimes only takes a couple hands to work it loose.

 

Or you are getting lucky.

 

Same reason I don't... You never know what the previous owner has done to the vehicle, intentionally or not.

 

Wow...

I taught my wife how to change the oil in the truck Saturday.


OP I'll give you credit for coming on here and admitting your mistake. That said, take your time and have everything ready "before" you start any maintenance on your truck. If you have everything lined out and ready to go no issues. Here's to hoping you didn't do any damage to your truck but I would be waiting on the inevitable if it were mine.

 

My bet is you got lucky. You can hand tighten the oil filter on, so you dont have to puncture it to come off.

 

I've heard stories of people leaving oil change shops and the tech forgot to fill the engine back up after draining. literally a mile of driving with no oil and the engine was fine.

Def a stupid mistake, but who hasnt done something dumb like that before? Youll be fine dude.

 

So, bit of an update... got the oil and put it in. Poured what I had drained into a bucket the previous day into the empty 5 quart container, it's at about 3 quarts.

So, I don't think I ever ran it totally dry, it always had at least 1 quart in it so the pump, since it as the bottom of the oil pan, probably kept enough oil going through the engine (the reason I got no lights and no overheating).... but it was a close call. Funny thing is, had I hit the traffic from closed roads due to an even in the area on my way home there could have been some damage done.

Let this be a valuable lesson to everyone (and myself) don't rush things and as RVM said... lay everything out to make sure you aren't forgetting anything.

What a weekend.

 

This is almost krazie...

 

"lay everything out to make sure you aren't forgetting anything."

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Oil, filter, done.

LOL, glad your taco survived, close one...if anything happens down the road like a spun bearing, remember this incident...

 

Oh, I will. I also don't plan on selling it, gonna run it until death, and may that death not be premature.

 

Ther is a good news: oil pressure in the filter is low so hole needs to be sizable to lose a lot of oil in short time.
There is also a bad news. What people forget oil pressure switch is right after the pump before filter. So you had pressure going to filter than outside, that does not mean you had enough pressure to force oil inside engine

 

When I was a kid I had a Saturn sl 1 that I ran multiple times with little to no oil and that car never had problems. I remember one time filling her up and forgetting the cap just to find oil all over the engine. The damn thing had 200 + thousand miles on it before I wrecked it. Not advocating running with no oil I just think it takes a lot more to burn up a reliable engine.

 

I'm curious since I don't know, but what exactly is the analysis going to tell the OP? Would it tell him if the oil degraded to far, or ran to hot? If that's what it does, is that really going to help him tell if every single bearing, shaft, and moving part in that engine is still 100 percent in factory specifications.

Testing your oil sounds interesting and I get why you'd do it to determine the oil change interval after the warranty period has expired, but to me it seems like it probably isn't going to give you any critical damming evidence of damage. OP knows it was running short on oil, and knows that it could of caused damage. Oil testing just seems like a somewhat wasteful test to tell him his engine may be damaged when he already knows that.

I would like an honest answer to this question, I've never had my oil tested (I've always done changes at low intervals because my engines are rarely left at factory spec) and any information about how to use the information to show engine wear/damage would be great.

Good luck OP, everyone makes a mistake sometime. Anyone here could strip a plug or forget the oil cap and cause damage to there engine unintentionally by rushing/not concentrating/ADD/whatever.

 

I think testing the oil that was still in the engine for metal bits would be my best bet.

 

Good enough, I think I'm going to do some research into this and maybe send away a sample. If you can really accurately tell wear on certain components with an oil test then it would be of great value to me.

 

Yep, ordered one yesterday. Fingers crossed it's fine...

 

haha, no, I wouldn't do that... if I did decide to sell it to somebody I would inform them of this incident. But I plan on running this thing until death.

But in informing the potential buyer I would also have all these oil analysis reports ready to put his mind at ease.

 

According to this link:

 

When I was a kid, we once took two old jalopies, drained all the oil in them, left the drain bolts in the dirt, put them nose to nose in a field. Started them up and put bricks on the gas pedal so they revved up to the rev limiter, then we sat back and drank beer until they motors grenaded. It took a long-ass time before the motors went "squeak-pop" and died.

dp