It was one of those weeks.
Last weekend, Diana got the mower out to get started with mowing season. Less than a minute after she started the mower though, oil started flowing from around the oil filter.
Sigh.
I knew it was overdue for an oil change. I’d bought the parts late last season but hadn’t gotten around to actually changing the oil.
Monday, I set to work on it.
Craftsman very kindly added an extension hose to the engine oil drain. The old version just had a short pipe coming straight out of the crankcase. While that helped a little, the mower frame didn’t let you get a container under the drain so oil just kind of flowed everywhere. I liked the idea of a hose.
If I could have gotten the drain plug off.
It was a square plug that you could put a 7/16-inch wrench on. I couldn’t budge that thing though. Cranked on it for close to an hour that day. Sprayed a bunch of WD-40 and cranked some more. Had a 3/4-inch wrench on the base of the plug fitting for extra leverage, but no luck.
Brought out the impact driver, but I couldn’t find an appropriate socket for some reason.
The next day, I went to Lowes then Harbor Freight (where I bought an oil filter wrench), then Tractor Supply, all in search of a single 7/16-inch socket. I found one at Tractor Supply, then headed home, stopping at Lowes again for PB Blaster and a propane torch.
You see, I’d come to the determination that whoever assembled this hose and plug had thoughtfully(!) sealed the threads with red Loctite.
Loctite is a threadlocker, an adhesive to make it hard for nuts and bolts to vibrate loose. Blue can be removed using basic hand tools.
Red is permanent and requires high heat to defeat. Like 500°.
When I got home, I hosed that drain plug down with a bunch of PB Blaster and cranked on it for quite a while.
That new socket I’d bought didn’t fit, either. FIgure that one out. But I did find another socket that fit, jammed it in place, and tried the impact driver again. Rounded it off well and goodly, I did.
I may have applied coarse language.
I applied substantial heat to the point that the hose started smoking. No luck. That drain plug was not coming loose. That made me think it was time to try another approach.
With photos of the offending fitting, I stopped by an industrial supply shop in town to see if they’d have something I could replace that fitting with. They did, but suggested I go ahead and cut it off and bring it in so we could be sure of fitting the hose properly.
I did, they did, and we did. While I headed back to the shop, I let the old oil drain into an old ice cream bucket I had sitting around. The mower holds about two quarts of oil, so the tub worked just fine.
Total cost: $3.23 including tax. Never mind the $65 or so I’d spent on tools and lubricants over the course of the week.
So Friday morning, I get the new fitting in place, then use my new oil filter wrench to get the old filter off. Then as I’m oiling up the gasket on the new oil filter, I realize it’s the wrong size.
Friday night after dinner, I picked up the correct filter at Lowes.
Saturday morning, I installed the new filter, double-checked the drain hose and oil capacity, and added fresh oil to the engine. I started it up there in the garage and checked for leaks. Diana was behind the mower, also watching for leaks. Neither one of us saw any, so I decided to run the mower around the yard real quick.
And promptly backed over the ice cream bucket with two quarts of dirty oil.
Sigh. At least I already had oil-dry on hand.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to share a thought in the comments. Sign up for my infrequent newsletter here. Find some of my other writing at The Good Men Project, too. Subscribe to the blog via the link in the right sidebar or follow it on Mastodon. You can also add my RSS feed to your favorite reader.
Share your thoughts!