Land Rover Forum

Last updated: 2003.03.10

Changing Engine Oil

- the (somewhat) Clean Way

Difflock Drain Plug on 200tdi Discovery

Changing engine oil on a 200tdi is a messy affair. Everytime I change the engine oil, I have to deliver a couple of bags of oilinfested gravel from my yard, as well as the more obvious cans of used oil. There's a huge splash of engineoil pouring out, not easily catched by your funnel, and a huge tray is necessary to catch what's lost. Whatever you do, there's bound to be a greasy trackrod, greasy differential, and if yours have anti-rollbars, they're in harms way catching lots of what you drain, Until now. www.Difflock.com sells a brass drainplug making the draining of oil a far cleaner affair. At £21+VAT+p&p ready for use, it's definetly excellent value for money.

The Beautiful Difflock Engine Oil Drain Plug

The drain plug is easily installed after draining your engine oil, tighten up till specified torque, and you just screw in a short hose next time you're up to oil renewal. The sumpdraining process is now a clean prospective. Not so the filter changing, but more on that later.

First of all - find your empty cans for the engine oil, and remove the filler cap in engine compartment.

You'll have plenty of time sourcing rags for the filterremoval later - you won't need any rags when emptying engine oil through the www.Difflock.com sump drain plug.

There's a protective brass cap to be removed. Enter the short hose with its brass plug on the threading - a bit fiddly, but trying another angle it will enter. As soon as it has entered, find your empty can and lead the hose into it.

After a couple of turns, the black stuff starts flowing - screw it all the way in. It's flowing quite slow, so you have plenty of time to reflect on those bad old days before the Difflock drainplug when you at this point were busy pointing the funnel at the blast of black oil, and trying to let the spout run into somewhere more useful than down your sleeve!

Now it's time to source a few rags, funnel, plastic bag - and remove any clothing you don't want to have infected with oil - 'cos this is the time you'll be entering the filthy filter zone.

The Dirty Doings: Oil Filter...

The new filter has a rubber sealing ring. Pick it up, and smear new, clean engine oil over it.

Put the new and ready oilfilter somewhere safe, and now you're ready for the messy part of the job.

The engine oil filter is tucked away far below - and tilted!!! As an item filled with oil, that has to be unscrewed, tilted back - and withdrawn from the engine bay, this is as bad as it gets. You'll get oily fingers, garage floor and so on.

I have found the cleanest way to do it, is place a plastic bag over the filter, and unscrew the filter with the bag attached around it. You will have to unwind the plastic bag while you're turning the filter, but eventually it all loosens up.

Tiltiing the bag up, and carrying it away - ready to pick up the inevitable spill...it's a real mess!

Why did Land Rover make the oil filter tilting? If only they had made it vertical, it would have been possible to make it a clean propostion. But this is about as clean as it will get until Difflock finds another ingenious way of removing the engine oil filter and disposing of the lot.

This is also the last you'll see from your neat latex gloves, as oil will destroy them fairly quick. Enter Difflocks nitrile gloves...

New engine oil and filter

The sump takes 6 litres, and the filter 0.85 litres, though I have alway had to use more than this, but maybe it's just a case of not measuring accurately.

The engine takes Multigrade engine oil, viscosity SAE5W/30 to 25W/50 to RES.22.OL.PD-2, or CCMC PD-2 or better... API CD (or CE, CF or CH-4). An ACEA A3/B3 is preferable, and takes synthetic oils as well as minerals.

6,85 litres of pouring engine oil and it should read like this on the stick.

The stick has a built-in feature: it is not possible to get two identical readings... So try several times, and eventually you get satisfied.

Start the engine - it will take a few seconds to fill the oilfilter, so the warning lamp will stay on for say 5 seconds or so. Shut it down as soon as it goes out, or if it doesn't go out. Recheck oil level, and fill up if needed. And recheck next day to be sure you got it right!

Take a permanent ink pen, and mark date and odometer reading on the filter. Then you'll know for sure when it was last changed.

This is what you need:
Change intervals:

The Land Rover Manual advice changing the 200tdi engine oil and filter every 10.000km; enthusiasts usually recommend changing more often than that - 7.000km intervals seem to be quite common. Dusty conditions, hard work, driving very short distances only etc., means you should go for short intervals.

Intensified change intervals is a cheap way of securing the engine a long life at a cheap cost.

And yes, you do have to change the filter every time oil is changed, yes!

Engine Oil Filter:

	Purolator	Fleetguard	Mann	Coopers	Fram	Champion
Oil filter 200tdi ERR3340	L30257	LF3451	W930/20	Z 1159	PH-5443	C105

Engine Oil:

6 litre + 0,85 litre for the filter.

Multigrade engine oil, viscosity SAE5W/30 to 25W/50 to RES.22.OL.PD-2, or CCMC PD-2 or better... API CD (or CE, CF or CH-4). An ACEA A3/B3 is preferable.

Engine takes synthetic oils as well as minerals, synthetics are preferred.

Tools:

If using Difflock drain plug, you'll not need any more copper sealing rings - if not, get a new one for each change!

Difflock sump nut with drainhose

Plastic bag

Some rags

Empty cans for used oil

If you overdone the filter last time, you might need a tool to loosen it all up.