Oil pan screw, how important is that washer? (ok laugh if you want)
 

Ok, I changed my oil. Oil pan screw fell into the draining pan. I forgot about the washer that goes on the screw when I got the screw out of the pan. Therefore, put new oil in the car without the washer on the oil pan plug. How important is that washer. Will I leak oil? Or have a chance of the plug comming loose and falling out, and letting oil drip out of my engine, and then have my engine seeze up? Or should I just go and try to unscrew the plug put the washer on and try to screw it back in before I loose all my oil? Yeah, rookie mistake.

idk lol. i changed the oil and didnt notice a washer(didnt see one though so hell idk) and i put it back on. btw i tired changing the oil again and couldnt get the screw off that easily.

So since I wanna stick to my motto of not Half-Ass'n anything with the GT this is what I did: I cleaned out my drain pan, placed it under the drain plug. I realized that I could just simply re-pour the new oil back into the engine. I got the washer ready and unscrewed the plug. I tried to get the washer on as quickly as possible and screw the plug back in. It wasn't too bad, I'm glad I put the washer on rather than worry about it. I think that it was leaking becuase I wiped off the drain plug area pretty good to make it quit dripping, after I made the thread I went back out to look at it and it was dripping a drop every now-and-then. I poured the lost, new oil back into the bottle to make it easier to pour back into the engine. It was about 3/4 of a quart. Everything fixed.
BTW it was Mobil one full synthetic 10W-30 and Mobile one filter.

why are you running such a thick oil?

You'll be OK. Forgot to put it back on my gf's Civic and it leaked oil but it was manageable since all it needed was for the pan to be wiped once a week or so. As for my car, I never even saw a washer from day one of me changing my oil and I never had a leak.

+1

I've just always put 10W-30 my engines. If it was new with <40,000 then I'd probably run something like 5w-20. Is there any article or reading that you guys can point me to for me to make a more informed choice? What do yall recommend?

If im not mistaken, some people use that thicker oil in the winter, but i use 5w-20 all year around.


And to answer your question, YES, the washer is very important, you could die. :-)

Hey just letting you know that ford makes a new drain plug for the oil pan. It dosent have that plastic washer crap. I found this out when I had to replace mine after the washer cracked. The new one has an o ring inserted in it. As far as the oil, I run 10w-30 in my car also. I asked my mechanic about that and he said it was fine to run 10w-30. I would stick with it since we both live in texas. I would rather have a slightly thicker oil, since our temp has been in the 100+ outside alot lately.

Thats exactly one reason why I use the thicker oil, it's not like we have to worry about it being too thick/cold on start-up.

Also, my oil pan plug is not the original. The original (I don't even know if it was the original one becuase I wasn't the first owner) started to pull on the threads and I just got a new plug rather than chance cross threading or pulling the threads or something. The original one might have had an o-ring I can't remember, but this new one has and plastic washer.