So today I had my maintenance tech change the oil on our property truck... he's been asking me to learn things about automotive stuff, and it was time to do it since we needed 5W-40 instead of the 15W-40 due to the cold weather. Sent him under the truck to pull the plug, let the oil drain out, had him replace the fuel filter while he was under there... So I hand him the torque wrench set for 19ft-lbs to put the drain pan plug back in and he slides his creeper up to do it. Grabs the 5-gallon bucket and pulls it towards him to push it out to me, and oil sloshes everywhere... as he jumps back from it, he "loses" the drain pan plug. He comes out, goes through his pockets, the hood on his coat, and can't find it. So we start looking around. We go over the entire shop floor... move stuff... look multiple times... look under the jack stands... look everwhere. Can't find the drain plug! So weird that it would just totally disappear!

Finally I jumped on the creeper and pulled myself under to start looking and as soon as I got down on my back looking up, I saw it. I had forgotten it was magnetic! As he had pushed himself back, he had accidentally put it up to the chassis and let go, and it stuck. So after about 20 minutes of searching for a plug, we finally found it.

So yeah, y'all remember it's a magnetic plug and just stick it on the oil pan where it should hang instead of pulling it all the way out!

 

The factory plug is magnetic?

Hmmm..: that's a new one to me. Don't remember that with my 05 and my 06 is Definately not magnetic.

Possibly replacement drain plug on my 06 don't know

Josh

 

Yeah... after I saw it, I remembered it was magnetic... I think I also remember reading that one of the reasons for doing that is so that it will attract any bits of metal that slough off into the oil and help pull them out. I remember someone talking about checking the tip of the oil plug for bits of metal as part of diagnosis on something or other. Yeah, real specific, I know! :-(

 

what's a drain plug?

 

Lol. Reminds me of the first time I got a deer, shot the deer and got over to it and having never field dressed a deer I pulled my knife out and asked if it would work to clean the deer and was told that it would so since we weren't ready to clean it yet I put it back in my pocket. Well when it came time to get busy cleaning the deer I couldn't find my knife, and I checked all of my pockets, crawled around on the ground looking for it under the sage brush, even moved the deer thinking it might have somehow got kicked under it and no one else had a knife. So a buddy of mine ran like a half mile back to the truck to get a knife and while he was gone I went to close the zipper on the leg of my coveralls and felt something hard against my thigh and realized it was the knife in the side pocket of my carpenter pants, because when I went to place the knife in the leg pocket of my coveralls with the zipper being all the way up it exposed the pocket in my pants so that's how the knife ended up there LOL.

 

I was putting new struts on my wife's car and as I was doing the work two little chow chow dogs ran into my garage and yap yapped at me and then ran off. When I was finishing up the work I discovered one off the hub caps was missing.I thought Oh Shoot, those dogs thought the hub cap was a Frisbee and carried it off.I went up and down the street looking for the dogs asking the neighbors if they saw two little dogs with my hub cap in their mouth? The only answer I got was a Horse Laugh.I went back home and opened my cabinet where I keep my oil and there was the hub cap lying on the floor of the cabinet.I can understand how they got it opened but how in the world did they get it closed!!!!! LOL

 

is it in the Bucket of OLD OIL

 

Yeah, we thought that too... Poured it into other buckets twice. That was when I finally climbed back under the truck and found it...

 

anyone ever forgot to put the plug back in before you added new oil? i have! last time i change the oil in a hurry! not! lol

 

yup factory plug has the much needed magnet in it

 

I purchased that Fumoto oil plug because I thought it seemed like a good idea After purchase I realized it is not magnetic. So now it sits on my tool bench. I guess I figured catching any metal debris in the oil was more important than not having to unscrew a drain plug.

 

The first place I was thinking of when he said it was missing was the
magnet stuck to something or the other place was in the bucket.

That magnet would of let Anthony know that the needle bearings in the
lifters had gone poof. That is one of the
reasons I won't use a valve. The other is I don't feel good with something
hanging down from the pan that is if DID get hit and snapped off.........

Sean

 

I worried about snapping the thing off also. I know a lot of guys use that valve, but is it really any extra work to unscrew the factory plug. It's not like we are changing the oil every other day......I guess it's kinda like fishing lures. some are designed to catch fish and a lot are designed to catch fisherman.

 

Josh

 

Well Anthony ( run6.0run ) is changing his oil about that often. Well maybe every week.

Sean