DIY – Changing Your Car’s Oil To Save Money
Filed Under: Do It Yourself on November 22, 2009
I was going to make my own do-it-yourself (DIY) for this, but found this video on the subject and figured it was better than anything I would do. I might still make my own attempt at it, but this video is far better.
An oil change as most lube shops or repair garages runs you $30-$60 for most vehicles. My 6-cylinder Toyota, for instance, uses 5 quarts of oil and costs about $50 to get an oil change at the garage. The same garage charges $40 to do my wife’s small Honda 4-cylinder car.
To buy your own parts to change your oil will cost you about $3/quart of oil, $8-$12 for the replacement filter, and about twenty minutes of time. Changing the oil in my Toyota pickup, for instance, takes me about twenty minutes and costs $18 (I buy the oil by the case, saving on each quart). So I save about $32 each oil change.
Since the average American drives about 12,000 miles per year and a car requires an oil change about every 3,500 miles, that’s 3.5 oil changes per year. That means that if I drove the average amount of most Americans each year (I don’t) I’d be saving $112/year just on my own pickup.
Now consider that most households have two cars. For many people, that savings amounts to a month’s car payment at that point. Nice!
Changing the oil is not hard to do at all, and I’ll let this great video show you how:
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