Oil Sump Pump

but I am assuming that the sump drain plug is at the bottom somewhere ?

anyway ... what happened to "flushing oil" ?

also ... during the course of the last 30 years or so, it seems to me that a lot of cars are using progressively lower viscosity oils.

When multigrade came along and relieved us of the chore of changing from summer to winter oil and back again, I think they were mostly 20W50 ?

But now, my Ford, along with a lot of other current models seems quite happy on 5W40.

I would imagine that (all other things being equal) the lower viscosity oils would more readily run out of the drain plug ?

or even 5W20

Yes of course, but that's the whole point of the pump:

Used it once in the early 80s, not since.

Well, I suppose it avoids having grovel under the car - but I'd prefer to let the oil drain by gravity in the time honoured fashion.

Some Smart Cars don?t have a sump drain plug. It became a standard mod to replace the sump with a modified one.

When we bought our Smart Car, it was one of the things I checked, although I later learned ours was to late to be one of the drainless ones. Smart abandoned the idea.

A lot of the ?quick oil? change places in the US suck the old oil out via the dipstick tube- they feed a pipe into the sump.

I?ve seen a few in garages here.

Personally, I don?t think they are a good idea. A quick ?whoosh? of warm oil as you remove the sump plug should ?carry? any sludge etc which is laying in the bottom of the sump.

If you try to suck the oil with a thin tube - it needs to be thin to go down the dipstick tube- at best you may suck up a bit of sludge around where the end of the tube touches the sump.

Ok, if you change you oil regularly, you shouldn?t get sludge but that is due to flushing it out, which the tube doesn?t.

True, but with the better rings on modern cars you get less blow-by, sludge is not the problem that it used to be, and modern detergent oils aim to keep particulate suspended anyway.

I assume that use of pumps by garages is down to time and convenience. No tray to be kicked over while working on other stuff. No need to use ramps even for a simple service.

Try a Fumoto valve. It's a game changer!

Don't see that as a huge advantage over a sump plug. I'd still have to get under the car and remove the tray. By the time I've done that removing the plug is the easy bit. And I'm not sure I like the idea of the exposed little lever to open it up.

Maybe in motorsport.

... where I believe a lot of engines use dry sump lubrication ?

There's also a nylon clip to prevent the lever being activated by road debris.

I can see it could be useful if the hose version was piped up to a pump mounted higher up, so you could turn on the pump and suck oil out of the sump (rather than the dipstick hole not designed for it). But then you'd still need to flick the little lever, so you couldn't entirely automate it.

Although even if you have to jack it up, being able to pipe directly into a waste oil container has its appeal... (it would have to be a shallow container though)

Theo

Some of us boat owners have come up with a smarter method of draining the oil, especially when access to us underside of the sump is problematic:

Again, if you're going to get under the car and remove any guards to get access to the drain point, you might as well give a spanner a few turns and remove the sump plug.

At least, I'm assuming that device is somewhere hard to access?

Eh?

This device effective replaces the sump plug with a hose and pump. On a narrowboat the sump is a few cm from the base. You simply place the pump at some convenient location.

The most difficult part is then replacing the filter.

Have they not heard about remote filter kits?

But it adds at least 4 more joints that can piss oil.

And needs more oil as the hoses to and from the remote filter have to be filled.

might as well stick in an oil cooler while you are at it ?

On the engine I have in mind access to the oil filter is good, so no need for a remote filter. Unscrewing the filter may require a tool, my point was that operating a handpump to empty the oil is a trivial operation.

The remote oil filter may well be useful for some marinised engines.