VW Golf TSI MK7 (2016) Oil Change
I’ve wanted to understand and tinker with cars since well before I could drive one. Until recently I’ve not owned my own car, and until very recently I didn’t even know the fundamentals of how an internal combustion engine (ICE) car works.
A quick plug for an awesome website: https://www.howacarworks.com/. This has hours of videos detailing each and every component of how an engine works as well as the connecting components (such as the intake system). There’s also a video series on stripping a Mazda MX5 down to its constituting parts. More videos should be coming soon (fingers crossed) as there’s still quite a few areas that are uncovered. Possibly the best £20 I’ve ever spent on any educational material!
There are also plenty of videos on youtube outlining the fix of crash damaged (written off ) cars, which are put back on the road. These also give a good insight in how a car works. Fixing a written off car could be a cheap way to own one, if you know what to look for, and have the space and time to fix one. I’ve found that these videos don’t go into enough detail, or sometimes the fixes are so extreme it’s more entertaining than educational.
A lot of my peers seemed to have just dived head first into tinkering with their first car(s) at an early age, which is definitely the best way to learn,. It’s never too late to lear a new skill, and this might be the way forward to accelerate my learning.
Before I dive into repairing a crash-damaged supercar or tinkering with an old, battered hot hatch, it’s probably wise to start small. One such approach is by performing routine maintenance on my own car. Although it can be somewhat tedious, there’s a great deal to learn; from familiarizing myself with the necessary tools, to locating and understanding the details and processes in online resources or Haynes manuals, and ultimately building confidence in my own maintenance work so that I can comfortably drive the car afterwards.
This brings me onto changing the engine oil on my VW Golf TSI MK7. Not only will this help me become more confident in using the tools, and confidence in my abilities to work on cars, it will also save me money on getting it serviced.
Prerequisites
I didn’t have any of the required tools, so after a quick visit to Halfords and around £400 lighter (around the same price to get my Golf serviced at a main dealer) I now have the following:
- A set of axel stands to hold the car up off the ground. Getting under a car while it’s on a Jack is very risky.
- A jack. I bought the one that can Jack up to 3 tonnes, it was only £10 more than the jack that lifts 2 tonnes. A useful feature of the jack is that it could be a safeguard incase the axel stands fail.
- An oil pan to catch the old oil from the sump, and then to easily decant into an empty container to take to the recycling centre.
- Wheel chocks to prevent the car from rolling while the car is up on the axel stands.
- A funnel to prevent spilling the new engine oil all over the engine bay.
- Oil filter pliers to help loosen the old oil filter off the engine block.
- Halfords Advanced tool kit (not pictured in the picture below) which I’m hoping has all the correct sized sockets that I’ll ever need.
- Magnetic LED light which was just a random purchase, but could be useful.
- Box of disposable gloves to help keep my hands clean, and make it look like I know what I’m doing.
Serviceable parts:
- 4 litres of Engine oil + 1 extra litre. I just typed in the registration of my car on the Halfords website and chose the Castrol Edge oil as it was what others had used, and what the manual suggests to use. In my car manual it says to use VW 503 00, but the new oil container has VW 504 00 written on the side of it [shrug].
- New oil filter. The existing oil filter is VW branded but I bought a Crossland branded oil filter with the same part number – 04E 115 561 H.
Extras:
- A couple of empty milk jugs which could be used to decant the old engine oil into.
- A large bit of cardboard to put under the car to catch any oil drips.
Steps
After watching various Youtube videos on changing the engine oil on a VW Golf (it varies depending on the year the car was built, the fuel type and trim) I was able to identify the following list of steps that need to be taken to change the engine oil on my particular car. Some of these steps may seem pretty verbose, but for me, a detailed step-by-step guide is exactly what I need to follow in the future.
- Ensure the car is cold. I don’t fancy having to go to hospital for skin grafts over a relatively simple maintenance job.
- Jack the car from the back. The jack needs to be placed in front of the back wheel where there’s a piece of metal 5 inches in length that protrudes downwards.
- Similar to the situation at the rear, there’s another 5 inch area behind the front wheel where the stand can be placed under.
- The car needs to be jacked up high enough so that the axel stand can be placed behind the front wheel.
- Slowly lower the car from the rear with the jack. It’s important to be slow here so that you can check that the car will rest on the stand at the correct jacking point.
- Now repeat the steps for the other side of the car.
- Once the car is on the axel stands, place the wheel chocks on the back wheels
- Open the bonnet.
- Check the dip stick, just our of curiosity. Don’t push the dip stick back down into its housing, just leave it loose. This will help drain the oil out quicker than if it it’s securely pushed in.
- Open the oil cap and rest it on top. Again this is to let air in, which will replace the old engine oil in the system, and therefore speeding the process of draining the old oil out of the system.
- Get under the front of the car and remove the plastic cover. You’ll need a T25 and T45 torx wrench for this.
- Once it’s off, have a look around and make sure the oil filter and sump plug bolt are easily accessible.
- Now for the all important bit of cardboard, get it laid down under sump.
- Place the oil pan directly under the sump bolt, but remember to off-centre it so that when it pours out that it won’t overshoot the oil pan.
- The car ideally needs to be flat and level, but at this point it’s on two axel stands. The reason it’s up is to get access to the parts that need replacing. If I just loosen the sump bolt and oil filter enough to make it easier to unscrew completely with my hand, then I can lower is back flat on the ground. It’s surprising how much of the sump bolt and oil filter can be unscrewed away from the sump and engine block before the oil starts to come out.
- Lower the car off the axel stands and back on to four wheels. I tried making life simpler by jacking it up once instead of twice by placing the jack in front of the bushing (pictured below). I was worried that the jack might be difficult to manoeuvre back out from under the car or whether I could easily jack the car back up from the same point. I instead just jacked it from the back again from each side.
- Ensure the cardboard and oil pan is still in the correct location after the car is back on all four wheels.
- Unscrew the sump bolt by hand, but don’t let it fall into the oil pan as the oil pours out.
- While the old engine oil is pouring out, clean up the washer and bolt and have some coffee.
- Once the oil has slowed to a drip, it’s time to move onto the oil filter. I found that I could place the oil pan directly below the sump to catch the drip as well as the slow pour of the oil after unscrewing the oil filter off.
- Prepare the new oil filter by removing the packing and adding some new oil on the seam of the new oil filter.
- Cleanup the old oil from the engine block and sump with an old rag. Screw the bolt and washer back in hand tight into the sump, and screw the new oil filter hand tight back in the engine block. We need to come back to the bolt in the sump, but the oil filter doesn’t need to be tightened any more than hand tight.
- I left the oil pan and cardboard in place to catch any leaks.
- The car needs to go back up so that I can torque the sump bolt back in at 30nm. This time I just jacked it up from one side, placed an axel stand on one side and got on with the torque job. Once that was tightened up, the car was back down on all four wheels.
- Now we need to pour in the new engine oil. Use the funnel to slowly pour in the oil. I poured in about a litre before remembering to check for leaks. I removed the oil pan from below the sump and waited for any drops of oil on the cardboard and checked around the bolt and oil filter for slow leaks. I found nothing, so went on filling it with more oil.
- At 3 litres in, I checked the dip stick to gauge whether it needed more oil. I was shocked to see that the whole hash had been covered, so obviously I was a little worried that I had overfilled. At this point I started the engine for about 10 seconds (not sure if this is a good idea). Taking the dip stick out after the quick engine idle revealed that the oil had only reached the bottom of the the dip stick. So I poured the rest of the bottle in. I took the same approach, starting and leaving the engine to run for 10 seconds, checking the dip stick, and this time it was closer to the top of the hash, which I was satisfied with.
- Check for any leaks again (there weren’t any). Place and tighten the lid on the oil reservoir. and close the bonnet. I then started the engine run for a minute to see if any oil leaks occurred. Fortunately nothing. I checked the dip stick and it looked the same as before. We’re on the home stretch!
- Jack the car back up onto an axel stand (one was enough) and put the plastic cover back on. Jack it back down onto all four wheels.
- Tidy up the work place; decant the old engine oil into the empty engine oil bottle; clean the funnel and tools; remove the cardboard and save it for next years oil change; etc.
- Go for a drive around the block. Once you get back and the engine has cooled, check the oil level on the dip stick. Did all that and still looks the same.
Learnings
Although it was a success, and having ran the car with no engine oil leaks for about 600 miles now, there are things that I would do differently next time to make the job slightly simpler and to be a bit more confident in the oil change.
Firstly, just get a new washer, in the grand scheme of things, it’s very cheap and avoids the stress of wondering whether the existing washer will have a good seal between the sump and bolt. Others have suggested that the washer can be used up to around 5 -6 times, but since I don’t know when it was last changed, it’s best get a new one.
When it comes to Jacking the car up, it’s just a lot safer to do it from the jacking points near the wheels, which are designated jack points as mentioned in the manual.
I think it’s safe enough to get the car on one axel stand, and there’s definitely enough room to work on all the areas of the car for the oil change when it’s up on the single axel stand. I’m assuming the 1.5 tonne rating of the axel stand is good enough to hold up one corner of the car, since the car weighs less than 2 tonnes, and most of the weight will be distributed to the 3 wheels that are on the floor.
I need to remember to remove the wheel chocks before lowering the car. The car moves as it gets jacked up and down, which means it starts riding up on to the wheel chocks, which the tyres shouldn’t be resting on.
Finally, the Golf is no super car, and it’s probably ok to buy a cheaper engine oil. I almost spent double the amount on Castrol Edge than an equivalent that was on offer.
