Oil Change

[PR325is]

ok wellz i was doing my oil change today and i was done taking off the oil and change the filter and everything... when i was putting back my oil drain plug the screw for the oil plug snapped in half !!! ghead now then i drilled that half peice that was stuck there and that thing went inside!!! holy crap!!!

my question now is will there be a problem if i just leave that peice inside the oil pan and buy a new drain plug and close it... would that small screw mess up my car?? need help!

[jllphan]

Ummm....yes. I don't think it would be wise to have a large chunk of alluminum sitting in your oil pan, while you attempt to run your engine. At this point, I would recomend dropping your oil pan, and retrieving that what's left of your drain plug before you decide to go for a spin.

If not you could seriously dammage your engine if shavings of what's left of your drain plug actually reached the internals of your engine. What might cost you a couple hundred bucks of removing your oil pan, could cost you an engine, if your unlucky enough and don't.

[bpowers]

This may not be so bad to fix. If I were in this situation, I would purchase a magnetized "part retriever/wand" (they're long and flexible and are designed to retrieve screws et. al. which fall into your engine bay -- sorry, don't know the exact name), drain the oil, and try to retrieve the remnant of the plug. As long as there aren't excess shavings hanging around, I would imagine this would do the trick!

[drz]

Very likely that will be a problem. Drop the oilpan, clean it well, and put it back with a new gasket. Decently easy to do. A friend of mine did it on his E30 6-cyl and he had NO previous mechanical experience.

[97alpineM3]

If I'm not mistaken the Bentely manual has a good write up on it... also www.pelicanparts.com might help you too...

Good Luck,

Les

[triggrhaapi]

Originally posted by PR325is@May 15 2005, 01:47 PM
ok wellz i was doing my oil change today and i was done taking off the oil and change the filter and everything... when i was putting back my oil drain plug the screw for the oil plug snapped in half !!! ghead now then i drilled that half peice that was stuck there and that thing went inside!!! holy crap!!!

my question now is will there be a problem if i just leave that peice inside the oil pan and buy a new drain plug and close it... would that small screw mess up my car?? need help!

[snapback]344745[/snapback]

drain oil, save it or not, your choice, then remove the oil pan (it's no big deal) and remove the particulate. Problem solved.