Do you change your own oil? It's okay to admit it, this is a safe place. We don't enjoy paying people to do simple tasks that we can and we don't mind getting a little dirty, so driveway oil changes are the norm around these parts. And with the savings of not paying a shop to change our oil we don't have to skimp on the important parts and are able to use a high-quality oil in our vehicles, we prefer Amsoil full synthetic motor oil.

When you have several vehicles to service sometimes it's just easier to buy in bulk. No, our trucks don't hold 20 quarts of oil each, we purchased Amsoil engine oil, transmission fluid, and gear lube for two trucks. That much fluid adds up!

One bonus of buying in bulk  is having the large boxes to protect against welding and grinding sparks and paint over spray. You can never have too many empty boxes! (that kinda sounds like a hoarder huh)

For our Ford Ranger we chose a 10w-40 motor oil. It's a little heavier than what newer vehicles are spec'ed with but for our high-mileage engine that is worked hard the added viscosity and added zinc will be a perfect fit. 

One thing we like doing before an oil change is to run half a bottle of STP Motor Treatment through the crankcase. STP recommends adding a full bottle to 5 quarts of oil, we like using half a bottle since we're still on the fence about adding a solvent to our engine oil. But it does make for a more complete oil change by breaking down sludge and other garbage in the oil just before draining it. We let our engine idle for 20 minutes with the STP in it then drained the oil.

The engine oil drains very black after running the STP Motor Treatment through it, so we think it must be working!

The last step after changing the filter and verifying that the drain plug is in is to refill the engine with the proper amount of oil, in our case it's 5 quarts of Amsoil.

Job done! Takes all of 20 minutes from start to finish and we didn't even spill oil everywhere this time!