Oil Extractor

Oil Extractor

The oil extractor is my new favorite tool for the time being. I am the person in charge of maintaining the family cars which means I have to make sure the cars get their oil changed on a regular basis.

It use to be a big hassle to change oil. Now that I have an oil extractor, the job has been simplified. I have the Mityvac 7400 7.3 Liter Fluid Evacuator and it has saved me many hours of changing oil.

Here’s what you do. Place the oil sucking tubes where the dipstick goes and give a few pumps on the machine. This will start the process of sucking out the engine oil. After that you can leave the car unattended or be amazed as you watch the oil defy gravity and get sucked out of the engine. One very convenient part of this is that your hands won’t be dirty so you can be at your computer, answer a phone, or work with other tools that you don’t want to use with oil soaked hands.

After a few minutes have gone by, go ahead and pump the extractor a few more times to get as much oil as possible. I like to pump a couple times before removing the tube out of the dipstick so that any oil still in the tube won’t come out from gravity.

Changing your oil is as simple as that. I do want to share a few tips that I have learned in my experience.

• Change the oil after the car has been running. This will warm the oil up allowing you to suck out more oil faster.
• Keep the tubes clean. After I finish changing the oil I wipe down the tubes and store them with a paper rag covering both ends of the tubes.
• Once a year I use the old fashioned method of emptying the oil by the oil pan. I do this after I have sucked out the oil to see if this particular engine will need further annual oil pan cleanings. Some engines will not give up all the old oil with an oil extractor, while other engines will work just great with an extractor every single time!

Some people have reported problems with oil leaking out of the unit. Apparently synthetic oil can bypass the o rings that are suppose to prohibit any leaking. I have yet to encounter any such problem and I pump out synthetic oil. I’ve used the Mityvac 7400 7.3 Liter Fluid Evacuator over 35 times and it has worked great each time.