chicagocamaro's 2002 Chevrolet Express Van

Kinda worried like hell about the van man!

Yesterday I did an oil job on the van after a week of getting low oil pressure after accelerating off idle, and at idle itself a few times. During the week when I was at the gas station, I noticed that the oil level seemed alright, I checked about three times this week. However when I took the oil filter off, the thing was shredded. I first tried to take it off with the grip, couldn't move, I used the lasseu, only messed up the label of the filter, then I had some oil filter plyers, I put two holes into the sucker from squeezing so hard. I had my dad's old friend help me get this sucker off, since he had some plumbing plyers and a screw driver with him. He never saw anything like it, and this is coming from a guy who's had a fair share of cars since the seventies. My dad saw the filter and said that he did something similar when he had a volkswagen golf in the 80's but knowing my dad, he probably used righty tighty that time to try and get it off.

When I emptied the oil out, I was only able to get one and a half quarts out, which leads me to a worried state of mind. The car shoots smoke, but it isn't blue. The weather got better for a few days in Chicago, and I didn't see my tailpipe shooting out excessive smoke at all. The van is always parked in the same spot every day, and I noticed no patch of oil. I checked the oil level all week before the oil change, it looked fine. When the oil came out it was black as satan's heart. I'm going to see what happens in the next oil change. The last oil change occured when my dad took it to a mechaninc shop that he's bee using for more than twenty years, but recently the shop changed ownership, and the work has been more than substandard, to a point that I won't take my other car there for various reasons.

I put in some mobil 5w 30 synthetic, and a standard AC Delco PF 2518. The previous oil was most likely non-synthetic Pennzoil, with a Fram filter. I noticed that the oil pressure jumped from 20 to 40 psi, and no longer dumped off idle or under acceleration. The drivabilty got better too. The gas pedal wasn't hard to move, and their was no hesitant stall. It has been a little more than three thousand miles, and three months since the last change. Hopefully I'm not suffering from a sludge problem. I did let the oil drip to the pan for more than almost three hours.

I'm going to do the chassis lube today and check the axle fluid, hopefully I won't get worried from that too!