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Old 11-12-2002, 10:32 AM
Richard Eldridge Richard Eldridge is offline
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Join Date: Sep 1999
Location: Miami, FL
Posts: 645
Why not Jiffy Lube?

The main reason not to take your car to Juffy Lube is that first they don't sell the proper oil, and second, the young greasemonkies frequently attempt to install your drain plug with an impact wrench set on "vaporize".

I suspect that they don't do a good job of instructing the kids how to change the oil. Any fool can buy a Jiffy Lube franchise: they don't require any training. I imagine that they give the owner a quickie course, perhaps on a videotape, which he may or may not show his young greasemonkies.

My car's drain plug was so badly boogered when I changed the oit the first time that I had to take it to a shop where they had the tools and savvy to get it off. I tried filing it and vise-grips, but it just would not come off, and previous attempts to remove it had resulted in an Olympic-class boogering.

A friend had this happen to his Nissan Sentra, which has 311,000 miles. They had cross-threaded the plug so badly the oil leaked out. He was lucky, and adding more oil saved it from destruction.

Changing oil is not rocket science, but the tales of Jiffy Lube murders of innocent engines are legion.

Many of the quickie lube places use the cheapest bulk oil and filters they can find. The filter on my car when I bought it was "Made in India". I have no way of determining if this is as good as a Hengst or Mann filter, but my guess is that it is no better and certainly was cheaper.

Luckily I have had no lubrication-related problems with my 300D, which now has 144K.
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Semibodacious Transmogrifications a Specialty

1990 300D 2.5 Turbo sedan 171K (Rudolf)
1985 300D Turbo TD Wagon 219K (Remuda)

"Time flies like and arrow, yet fruit flies like a banana"
---Marx (Groucho)
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