First oil change...not too bad

I scoured all the threads relating to oil changes over the past month or so. Armed with all the knowledge that I gleaned from the threads I attempted to change the oil in my 3.2 today. Right off the bat I ran into a snag when I found my drain plug to have been stripped out. Unfortunately 10mm was the largest size hex wrench I could find at my local hardware store. Fortunately my neighbor had a larger size wrench that he put to an angle grinder and shaved off just enough to fit the hole. After draining the oil I decided to try to get a better look at the transfer case fill plug (since I was already covered in oil). I removed the air intake assembly but didn't get much more access. As I was reassembling the intake I accidentally dropped the cotter pin...I could tell from the sound that it didn't fall all the way through. Imagine my sheer terror when I looked underneath the air intake an saw all the belts and pulleys directly below. I'm not usually one to panic but I think its safe to say that panic is exactly what I did! I looked down into the belt area but couldn't see the cotter pin anywhere. At about that time the sky started to get dark and looked like it was going to pour at any minute. I hurriedly took off the wheel to get a better look. Fortunately when I took off the inner wheel well panel the cotter pin fell out. Apparently it fell behind the panel and not into the belt assembly. I breathed a sigh of relief and put everything back together. I put about six quarts into her and a new Baldwin B253. Ran her for a little bit and then put another quart into her. The dipstick shows the level to be a little high, but nothing that a couple hundred miles won't fix. All in all it went pretty smoothly...just hope it goes as smoothly (or smoother) when I try to tackle the gearbox oil change.

 

Well done, you'll save a fair bit of money if you can do some of the servicing on it. Keep the parts receipts for the history file, to show that it's been done.

I dropped a 10mm socket and one of the plenum chamber bolts into the engine on my Mondial t and never found them.

 

I believe all the transmission fluid bolts are on the other side of the engine, opposite the belts.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. I thought I read somewhere that it was behind the right rear wheel well / under the airbox but I guess I was mistaken. Took a look at it last night...doesn't look like its going to be a problem at all.

 

I followed one of the processes here and used the suggestion of after draining to fill the system through the drop down gear area until it flows from the fill on rear of transmission. Worked fine and no issues. I also used the long flexible tube on the end of a funnel to snake it from the top of the engine to the fill hole.