Re: Quick oil drain plug...

[Andrew Duane USG/PE <duane@zk3.dec.com>]

Hairy green toads from Mars made Glenn Lawton say:

> Andrew Duane USG/PE wrote:
> > ...It is simply a drain valve. You screw it in once, tightly. Then
> > when it's time to change oil, you just flip the valve and all the
> > oil drains out. Flip valve closed and refill. ...I have oil change time 
> > down to 5 minutes...
> 
> 
> I'm all for convenience, Butttttttttt, no way Jose on my car, no no no. 
> I could just imagine a stick, a rock, a small animal, pushes on that
> flip valve, and poof, I've traded 15-5 = 10 minutes of my admittedly
> valuable time for........A NEW ENGINE...........
> 
> Even _my_ time is not that valuable.
> 
> You know, I'll probably get a thousand posts telling me that it can never
> happen, yadda, yadda, yadda. The fact is, it can, and I would spend all
> my anal retentive worrying, wondering when it would happen.

Let me be the first of those thousand.

The valve lever has a 2-directional spring load with a positive lock.
You need to move the lever in one direction, apply quite a bit of
pressure, then hold that pressure while moving the lever the other way.
Also, the direction the spring pushes is *down*, so something hitting
it from underneath would be pushing the wrong way.

Overall, anything that hit hard enough to even give a chance of moving
the lever would rip a hole in your pan first.

On the other hand, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean
that they're *not* out to get you....

-- 

Andrew L. Duane (JOT-7)			duane@zk3.dec.com
Digital Equipment Corporation		(603)-881-1294
110 Spit Brook Road
M/S ZKO3-3/U14
Nashua, NH    03062-2698

Only my cat shares my opinions, and she's too heavy to care.