Operation Oil Change

It’s a horrible feeling when you are driving along at night and you turn on the light to check your speed (the dash light doesn’t work) and you notice the oil pressure gauge is doing a dance then staying up at maximum, then dropping to normal, then dancing, rising, dancing then dropping.

We drove to the nearest free camp and stopped the night.  Did some research the next day and decided the most likely problem was old oil.

A couple of days later we drove to the nearest town (Gladstone, QLD) and went searching for an oil filter.  Easy task, eh?  Well, no!  We arrived in town at around 10:30 and finally found a place that may be able to order one in by around 5 pm!  That night we did some more sleuthing and found that they were quite hard to get in Aussie, but easy in USA.  Decided to go with the local parts place (Maxiparts) to hopefully get it quicker as we didn’t want to drive the bus much more and risk damage to the engine.

We rang them early in the morning then waited ALL DAY for them to call us back!  Finally on Friday afternoon after several calls to them, we got one ordered – from Darwin. 

And so we waited!  We parked up next to the Junior Sports Grounds and waited for someone to come tell us to move!  (No one did)

Late Monday afternoon, we got the phone call saying the filter had arrived!  We asked if they could deliver it out to us, which they did at no extra charge – or maybe that was included in the $40 freight charge from Darwin!

First thing Tuesday morning we got onto the oil change only to find the bungs were done up so tight they would not move at all!  We spent a frustrating day trying to get someone with the proper tools to come and help.  We thought about syphoning it out, then someone on facebook suggested it too.

So now it’s Wednesday!  We take a walk to the local Supercheap Auto and purchase a hand syphon and set to work on emptying the oil sump. 

We ended up removing the filler pipe to make our job easier.

 

Our next challenge was to remove the old filter.  We banged a screwdriver though the bottom to use as leverage and hit it with the hammer!  It didn’t want to come off at all!  Finally we noticed a minuscule movement!  The cheer brought out some of kids to have a look!

 

Once the filter was off it was a relatively easy job.  We bought some ultra black silicone gasket maker as the old one round the filler plug was shot!

Once it was all put back together, we filled the new filter with oil, filled the sump with oil and hoped and prayed that we’d fixed the oil pressure problem!

After dinner we took The Odyssey for a spin, and the she ran like a well oiled machine!! What a relief!

Meanwhile Jireh ….