“Why are we such idiots?” Jason pondered, loudly and with a hint of resignation. David is laughing so hard he’s almost inconsolable as we all suddenly realized that we just took a 10-minute job and made it an almost hour-long affair involving various spilled fluids, ruined clothes, and a remarkable lack of sense even for us.
What made it even funnier is just how easy the job seemed at first. As a little background, we’re taking the XPEL Murano CrossCabriolet to the only place that we think it’ll be appreciated: Monterey Car Week. While we’ve yet to be invited on the lawn either at The Quail or Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, I’m assuming it’ll happen as soon as Mrs. Button sees it passing down 17-Mile Drive. She’ll leap from the rumble seat of a 1931 Duesenberg Model J and insist we join the Concours on Sunday.
To be prepared for such an occasion, we’ve taken a few steps. First, it’s been lifted by our friends at Galpin Auto Sports and put on a pair of gorgeous Vredestein Pinza A/Ts. More on that later, though there’s a little teaser below. Second, we’re not sure when the last oil change was, but the oil change reminder light was on so David decided it was best to do the oil change last night, following a bunch of meetings, when both Jason and I were exhausted (my day started at about 4:30 am on the East Coast).
Because the Murano CC now sits higher, David discovered that he wouldn’t even need to put the car on ramps. With a quick turn of our Mustang V6 wheels, the tiny oil filter was suddenly accessible. David quickly changed into proper grease monkey attire while Jason and I stood around checking out how well the PPF had held up to various miseries.
Here’s where the issue began. David was unsure of how much oil was in the Murano and, at the same time, how much oil was left in his drain pan. Doing a little mental math, David assured us it would be fine. Probably. I walked away to grab something only to hear David and Jason start laughing and bickering.
The drain pain was suddenly and immediately full. David’s calculation must have been wrong somehow. It was now stuck under the car, too full to move. Jason considered putting the Murano into neutral and having us push the car away, but he accidentally started the car with no oil in it [Editor’s Note: I blame the stupid start button, which is overeager. – JT] as David and I frantically yelled at him to turn off the car before it was too late. Thankfully, Jason already had his finger on the start button and immediately killed the engine before any damage was done. Jason then tried to wedge cardboard under the pan to pull it out, all the while spilling oil on everyone.
This led us to wander around the Galpin backlot looking for David’s secret stash of car parts and fluids. We found another drain pain, but one of the screwtops was missing. We found one that would fit, but it was from an old bottle of coolant, so David mixed two coolants together and stole the top from the empty one.
As soon as we did this, of course, David found the original top, so we set the empty pan next to the now Valdez-like overflowing one, and David slowly began to sloppily attempt to scoop dirty oil from the overflowing pan into the other one (after remembering to grab the Cross Cab’s oil pan drain plug).
You can see what happened next in the Instagram video here, or embedded below:
It was not great. Shortly after this clip ends, Jason asks the universe: “Why! Why are we so stupid? Why can’t we get a break?”
An excellent way to start the trip.
The post Watch Us Make An Oil Change 500x Harder Than It Needed To Be appeared first on The Autopian.
