Oil Change Scare
_18:03 - The Oil Change Scare
I just got back from Valvoline Instant Oil Change and man do I feel stupid. I don’t know crap about cars, and any time someone asks me anything referring to cars or worse - my car, I just don’t know what to say or do.
How it happened
I pulled up and ask them if I could get my oil changed here (my first embarrassing mistake) and after slowly driving into the garage they started asking me all these questions.
My main concern was to make sure my car got taken care of and my wallet not taken advantage of. This oil changing girl asked me what type of service I wanted done on my car and gave me more options than I thought should be possible when getting your oil changed.
Luckily she had a brochure of pictures that allowed me to simply point and smile. As easy as that part was I felt as if I had just clued them off with my point and smile manuver.
They know I’m dumb now
30 seconds later she came back with a dirty air filter and some sort of breather. I didn’t want her to ask me about those and how they got so dirty but she did worse - she explained to me how bad it was to let these get so dirty and if I wanted them to replace them.
At this time I had no idea what to do and wasn’t sure if they were trying to pull one over on me or if I really needed to get these replaced. I just wanted her to be honest with me - to somehow know this was hard, but it wasn’t happening.
I was thinking about telling her how beautiful she was (a big lie there) and asking for her phone # to make her come out of this - “I’m going to screw this guy over because he has no idea” mode but I couldn’t bring myself to ask and found myself once again nodded my head and smiling to what she said.
Newer things are good right?
Even though I was scared out of my mind at what might happen - I felt alittle comforted with knowing my car would have newer things in it and that should help my car last longer, right?
She came back to me a couple more times with other things I should change but I started to figure out the cost of all these services and it was becoming alot. Once I realized I was over $50.00 I decided to start saying no to everything and just wanted to leave.
I ended up shelling out a total of $57.64 but it was now all over for another 3 months. I pulled out and vowed to never go again by myself and to take someone else that knows about car along with me next time I had to come in.
Jim DeBruycker Says:
You should always change the oil filter with an oil change. Unless you are driving nearly constant short hops and the car doesn’t get a chance to warm up, you can wait longer than they used to in between changes. Check you manual - it may be up to 7500 miles. the more shorter trips, the sooner. It will also give a timeframe, regardless of miles. This is usually now 6 months. the oil and addatives are better than they used to be. The air filter and the breather usually only need to be replaced at about 30K miles. Oil normally looks really grungy - you can’t tell from looking. If it smells burnt, though, that is a problem - black is okay (it’s just doing what it is supposed to - holding the gunk in suspension). A good filter is important, though - almost as much as keeping the oil changed and the level up.