To suck or not to suck? That is the question...

Upon further review the bottom of the pan is bevelled so that it slopes toward the plug. It doesn't flatten out until it gets within an inch or two of the plug.

You can still defeat that by raising the BACK of the car on ramps or something.

-mickey

And I just got one of those suction devices..... Not good.

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70-FR-TX
'94 Golf tdi 1Z

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by RES:
Gewilli:
If you don't suck the oil out of the filter housing how much oil are we talking about?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

between 1/4 to 1/2 quart (0.25L to 0.5L)

enough that the super AR will want to have the suction device just to pull the last drop out of the filter housing. It means that you need more NEW oil for each filter change but it explains why so many are getting overfilled.

Re: How much oil do you get if you use suction to pull the oil from the leads and bottom cavity of the oil filter housing?

Ans: It was about 12 ounces last time.

I will do an oil change at the Ft. Lauderdale GTG (getting my free dealer 10k "flush" Thursday) and we can measure the amount of oil retrieved by the "Tupper-Sucker" from the bottom of the oil filter cavity and the leads to & from it.

That 12 ounces is about 8% of the 4.5 quarts of new oil, and is not used dirty oil mixing with the new oil.

With the soot carrying capacity of the Delvac-1 I use, 8% is no big thing. Probably like changing your oil with used 1,000 miles when you don't use suction at an oil change.

I'm also curious to see if the oil still stays amber this time for 600 miles or so like it did before (when I treated the dealers' 5k oil change as a flush and also did the suction). The dealer's 5 k oil change went "dark" right away.

Re: Free "Tupper-Suckers" at the Ft. Lauderdale.

I'm afraid I cannot find any new TupperWare containers (Wal-Mart, K-mart, discount mall, etc...) in my area, so that I'll have to make up these devices from RubberMaid products. They'll be called "Rubber-Suckers", son of "Tupper-Sucker". I'll make up 10 or 12 and give them away.

Sidesucker: I'll also be testing some prototype extensions of the "Tupper-Sucker" to pull oil, if any, from around the drain plug, which I will name "SideSuckers".

Going for that amber oil look as long as I can.


Cheers and See Ya!

Sierraent
Dick Baumer


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I will try to use my Mity-Vac tool to get that last 12 ounces of oil out of the filter cavity. http://JCWHITNEY.COM/product.jhtml?CATID=5357

I can't stand it anymore. I'm about to post a Jenna Jameson Video which is the definitive answer to the question.

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couple of Rabbits, a Golf and a Passat TDI

I picked up a Topsider today and changed the oil in my Benz. Cool gadget! It worked very well. The only problem is the clear vinyl hose collapses when hot oil flows through it, so the drain takes longer than necessary. But theoretically you can pump it up, stick in the tube, release the hose clamp and go watch TV for a while while it works.

-mickey

Mickey,

What's this? You're going to go and watch TV and miss all the fun and "action"?!

Cheers

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I also ordered one last week from JC Whitney haven’t received it yet. So Mickey do you think it would perform better when the car is cooled some but not totally cold? Or is the hose so flimsy that it will not matter? Will it require the hose to get changed out to a more regid hose?
Hondo

Mickey, now that you have expeienced the TopSider for yourself, do you like the idea of getting a stiffer piece of plastic tubing with appropriate ID/OD to replace the soft tubing and hopefully be able to detect when you have hit the bottom of the pan????

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96 TDI Wagon, ABS, emerald green
00 Jetta TDI GLS, silver arrow, CWP, LUX1, etc, etc.

I was at the Mall last night and low and behold there was a Tupperware Kiosk! yeah one of those carts in the middle of the mall was selling tupperware -

for those of you interested in teh TupperSucker

hey RabbitGTI,
you need to send all Jena Jameson video material to me for review before posting it here - seriously I'll make sure only the most tastefull stuff will get posted - but I will have to review all of the material . . . -oops I think I might have gone too far- heh-heh heh-heh (my best Beavis and Butthead imitation)

Topsider recommends that you run the engine for five minutes so the oil is WARM. They don't recommend that you suck hot oil. I did anyway, so I'm sure that contributed to the problem. But the soft vinyl hose will probably collapse any.

I have no problem with the stiff suction tube. It does get a little floppy, but it was obvious when it made contact with the bottom of the pan. Of course, the landscape at the bottom of the Mercedes pan is probably a bit more like Nebraska than a TDI pan.

The system could use a little tinkering and re-engineering, but it works right out of the box. It just takes a while.

Yeah, I did my sucking with the engine stone cold (probably around 40F) because the car had been sitting unused for ten days. I had been out of town.

I let mine drain for about 2 hours until nothing more came out. I got nearly 4 qts without suctioning the oil fitler housing which I should have done. I did not have any problems with the tube collapsing. It seems to make sense to do it with a "warm" engine.

I could never tell if I was hitting the bottom of the pan but you sure can tell whether you are pulling oil or sucking air.

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96 TDI Wagon, ABS, emerald green
00 Jetta TDI GLS, silver arrow, CWP, LUX1, etc, etc.

[This message has been edited by dieseldorf (edited December 08, 2000).]

I rolled around in the oil and coolant puddle under the corpse of the Evil Beetle tonight and I have achieved the Ultimate Enlightenment regarding the "suck" question:

I re-installed the pan baffle to the bottom of the block. (It bolts to the block with one bolt, then the pan itself holds it in place.) Then I poked the suction tube of my Topsider into the dipstick tube to see how it interacted with the baffle.

The suction tube will have a curve to it due to its being coiled up for shipping. This is important! If you insert the tube so the tip wants to curve toward the FRONT of the car it'll clear the baffle and reach the bottom of the pan. If it curves toward the REAR it either gets hung up on the baffle or it actually goes behind it but at an odd angle that won't allow it to touch the bottom of the pan. So make sure you store the suction tube in a fairly large coil...maybe 24" radius...and you should be OK. And insert it with the tip curving toward the FRONT of the car!

Next problem: The "front" of the oil pan (opposite the drain plug) is sloped fairly steeply downward toward the plug. The tube will touch at the top of that slope. Continuing to push MIGHT make it slide along the bottom of the pan until it reaches into the deepest part, but then again it might not. The only way to ensure that you'll get all the oil out is to either jack up the rear of the car or to back it up onto ramps. The angle of the bevel at the bottom of the pan is fairly steep (you can see it just by looking at the bottom of the pan) so the back end of the car needs to be quite a way up in the air. When the front part of the pan is level you're perfect. But with the CAR level you'll leave about 1/2 quart or so in there.

I have an ace in the hole, though. I'm going to be installing a Gulf Coast filter, using a Como Industries hollow drain plug. If I can figure out a place to mount the filter up top where I can reach it easily I will be able to hook up the Topsider to the filter return line. No need to hike the back of the car up in the air.

-mickey

At the Ft. Lauderdale GTG at Kent's house on 12-9-00, I did an oil change.

I first drained the oil from the pan, then took out the filter and then used the "Tupper-Sucker" to take out about 10 ounces; sightly less than last time.

The oil was still clear when I got back to Tampa, 260 miles later.

Cheers!

2001 Golf GLS TDI
now Upsoluted and Epsilon'd (sp.?)




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So I guess the best solution is to just get her tail in the air and start sucking!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by RES:
I will try to use my Mity-Vac tool to get that last 12 ounces of oil out of the filter cavity. http://JCWHITNEY.COM/product.jhtml?CATID=5357 <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


you can also get these from eastwood , the newer ones have a nice twist valve that changes from a vacuum pump to a pressure pump. The guage also measures pressure and vacuum.

good for changing the oil in a lawn mower, or sucking out the last of the fuel at the end of the season when you store it.

Great for bleeding brakes, or for testing vacuum switches as well.

The only way to out all th ecrud in the pan is to drain, don't use suction. Nothing works like gravity!

I disagree. By suctioning you use atmospheric pressure to BLOW the crap out of the pan. That's more force than mere gravity. Besides, the drain plug opening isn't at the exact bottom of the pan.

-mickey

Question - The picture at the vey beginning of this thread shows a metal chain sprocket belt towards the left side of picture. I thought our timing belts were rubber...so, what is this chain belt? (can you tell I am not a mechanic?)

We now have a chain driven oil pump. Older VW engines, such as on my 1974 Dasher and 1982 diesel Rabbit, had an "intermediate" shaft, from which the oil pump, gasoline fuel pump (on carburated engines), and distributor/vacuum pump (depending on engine), were driven. In order to get rid of this anachronistic intermediate shaft, it was necessary to move these appliances around. The oil pump gets a chain off the main crank, the distributor on gassers gets moved to the camshaft, and since all cars today are fuel injected, gasoline fuel pumps got moved to the fuel tank (no more carburator floats).

it is worth draining and then sucking?

more time consuming, but if i remember correctly the oil capacity of the TDI is 4.75 quarts(litres?) of oil .
or 5 litres when filled by the dealer

OH! so that's what the chain is for! thanks.