This past saturday i did my first oil change. I went to g-owners.com to check out their diy. As i read it it said that you needed to remove the cover underneath to gain access to the filter. I can see how this is effective, but i didnt even need to remove any cover at all. Basically i jacked the car up on the passenger side and unscrewed the drain plug and let the oil drain out. I then lowered the vehicle so the car would be as leveled as possible getting all of the oil out as possible. Once it was all drained i jacked the car up again and fished my hand in the opening where the drain plug area was and managed to put the oil filter socket on the filter it self. I then used a swivel(sp) attacthment with the filter socket. There was another small opening where you can clearly see the oil filter. I then used an extenstion to reach the socket and managed to undo the filter slowly and have it drain out. After it was done i replaced the filter, and proceeded on with the oil filling.

All in all it wasn't to bad of a change, My question for some of you guys is did you remove the underpanel when you change your oil? Is it a bad idea that i kept mines on even though i was still able to drain everything and replace the filter with no problems/an little to no mess. By the way i used Castrol NON-SYNTHETIC oil as my first change because i heard that you shouldn't use Sythetic as your first oil change or atleast for your first 1000+ miles. Not only that i used 10w30 instead of the recommened 5w30. It was kinda by accident that i had picked this particular weight i was looking in the 5w30 area but i grabbed the 10w30 by accident, is this a bad thing?

 

I also read the FAQ, and decided to remove the twenty 10mm bolts that held the underpanel on...didn't take me that long, but it was a PITA.

At 1200 miles, I dumped the factory oil. I used a Mobil One M110 filter and 5 quarts of Castrol GTX 5W30.

I think you'd be ok with the 10W30 unless you live in a really cold enviroment and you park outside (winter's coming!). Of course you can also dump that cheap conventional oil in a few thousand miles anyway and replace with 5W30.

 

I always take off my diffuser when I do my oil changes.

It really is a huge pain in the ***... and makes the oil change procedure take 3 or 4 times as long as it should. If any of us had access to a lift, we wouldn't have to remove the thing, just take off the rear few screws and bend it down.

The reason why I have yet to try doing an oil change without removing it, is that I don't want a whole bunch of oil to dump out onto my diffuser when I remove the oil filter.

I actually haven't done an oil change on my G35 in a while though, since I have been splitting a lot of my driving duties with my Tacoma(resulting in very little milleage accumulation on the G35)... but I'm going to do an oil change this weekend or early next week just before I take the car off the road for the winter.

There's a chance that you might be able to put take a plastic bag and put it around the oil filter when you remove it(put the plastic bag completely over the oil filter while the filter is still on the car), and then unscrew the filter by turning the filter and bag both at the same time... this way anything that drips out of the oil filter or oil filter access point will drip into the bag, rather than onto your diffuser. Think of the plastic bag as an oil-condom for your oil filter... just put it on over the filter, then grab the filter on the outside of the bag.. and unscrew it.

I'm not sure how feasable this is on a G35 though, because work space is probably going to be severely limited with the diffuser on... but this is how I do my oil changes on my truck, to prevent massive oil spillage(plastic bag trick).

 

I take the cover off too to help keep things clean and for easy access. You're bound to get some splash on the cover if it's not removed and that will drip and make a mess.
I agree with waiting to put in Synthetic oil to allow the engine to at least partially break in.
C.

 

Partyman= Awesome tip on the plastic bag idea over the oil filter.

Beleive it or not but as i removed the oil filter from its compartment i was able to view it from teh small opening i had used to insert the extension to the filter and noticed that the oil had just dripped straight down. Miraculously i didnt make a mess as i anticipated. Maybe i just got lucky who knows. But i did not remove the underpanel. More then likely i will take my car into the dealer for its 3750k oil service(i changed mines at 650 miles) along with other fluid changes and let the dealer deal with removing the panel off. Im just scared that when i look underneath my car im gonna find missing screws if the job was not done properly.

Oh one last question. Is there generally a better weight/viscosity to use in the summer time and winter time. In my area it gets as cold as 20-31 degrees over night in the winter time and fairly hot 90 deg. in the summer time. Generally would i want to use 5w30 in the winter time being that its a much thinner grade of oil. and use 10w30 in the summer being that its thicker and summer heat is more then likely to burn oil. I hope thi smakes sense, if not please correct me on this.

 

According to what I've read...
If you use full synthetic oil, you don't have to worry as much about oil viscocity in the winter, as the synthetics are better at retaining their malleable qualities in severe cold than dino oil.

5W30 is the general recommended viscocity for all operating conditions, and your climate certainly does not warrant useage of anything less than that(some people in severely cold climates will even run 0W30 in places like northern Canada where overnight temps can get as low as -70 and block heaters are a must).

I live in New England and I run 5W30 all year long with no problems, but I also don't drive the car from December to March.... which, if you think about it... means that I generally drive my car in the same conditions that you do(20-100 degrees).

If you end up switching to full synthetic, I'd say stick with 5W30 all year long.

I guess if I lived in a place like Arizona or Southern Cali, I'd at least consider switching to a heavier oil.. but more than likely I would end up sticking with the 5W30.

 

cool thanks for the tip