Oil Leak! Please Help!
#1
11-19-2012, 09:33 AM
Oil Leak! Please Help!
Hi everyone,
I have a 2006 Accord V6 and I notice a slow oil leak coming from the drain plug. Trust me, I learned my lesson going to Jiffy Lube and having some teen doing your oil change. To make a long story short, it seems the oil drain plug is stripped. I tried to tighten it but it wouldn’t hold, and I hear the threads breaking when tightening it.
How would I know if the threads on the plug are damaged or the threads on the pan? Is threads on the pan harder than the plug?
I didn’t remove the drain plug to fully inspect it, but I don’t know if I should order a new plug and it will fix my problem. I also heard of people using an oversized plug to create new threads. Does the work? Any ideas?
Please help.
Thanks.
I have a 2006 Accord V6 and I notice a slow oil leak coming from the drain plug. Trust me, I learned my lesson going to Jiffy Lube and having some teen doing your oil change. To make a long story short, it seems the oil drain plug is stripped. I tried to tighten it but it wouldn’t hold, and I hear the threads breaking when tightening it.
How would I know if the threads on the plug are damaged or the threads on the pan? Is threads on the pan harder than the plug?
I didn’t remove the drain plug to fully inspect it, but I don’t know if I should order a new plug and it will fix my problem. I also heard of people using an oversized plug to create new threads. Does the work? Any ideas?
Please help.
Thanks.
#2
11-19-2012, 10:35 AM
Before over-tightening it, I would've bought a new crush-washer and used that next time. Tolerate a little bit of leakage for now.
If the pan is cast aluminum, it's probably the threads in the pan, not the steel bolt. Cross your fingers & hope.
Maybe repair it with a HeliCoil next time you change oil?
If the pan is cast aluminum, it's probably the threads in the pan, not the steel bolt. Cross your fingers & hope.
Maybe repair it with a HeliCoil next time you change oil?
#3
11-19-2012, 11:49 AM
Well.. I never used a HeloCoil system. I was thinking about getting an oversized bolt and see if that works by making new threads. I'm also thinking about taking the car back to JiffyLube and let them deal with the problem being that they started this. I dont know what I should do.
#4
11-19-2012, 01:48 PM
Forcing an over-sized bolt into your aluminum drain pan is just going to put you on the path to buying a new drain pan.
A heli-coil basically makes a larger threaded hole into a smaller threaded hole. I think your drain plug is 14mm. To use a Heli-coil, you would drill and tap a 16mm threaded hole and then screw in an insert (the heli-coil) that had 16mm threads on the outside and 14mm threads on the inside. That way, you'd still be able to use the stock plug.
If you don't want to use an insert, you could just drill and tap the drain-plug hole for a larger size (16mm) and buy a larger drain plug.
If you do not drill and tap the hole, you will damage the drain pan and it will probably still leak.
A heli-coil basically makes a larger threaded hole into a smaller threaded hole. I think your drain plug is 14mm. To use a Heli-coil, you would drill and tap a 16mm threaded hole and then screw in an insert (the heli-coil) that had 16mm threads on the outside and 14mm threads on the inside. That way, you'd still be able to use the stock plug.
If you don't want to use an insert, you could just drill and tap the drain-plug hole for a larger size (16mm) and buy a larger drain plug.
If you do not drill and tap the hole, you will damage the drain pan and it will probably still leak.
#5
11-19-2012, 01:58 PM
If the oil change was recent, and you can get them to acknowledge that they did it, then let them fix it. After all, it was their problem for overtightening it; at least as far as we know from reading this thread.
#7
11-19-2012, 06:11 PM
Did they put it on with an impact? I can never understand why people are so lazy when it comes to putting drain bolts back on. Yeah they save time, what, ten seconds? In exchange for pissing a customer off and possibly paying for it later.
Putting lugnuts on with an impact is BS but at least that's understandable, there are a lot of lugnuts. Drain bolt is one bolt.
Have you thought about trying this?
Putting lugnuts on with an impact is BS but at least that's understandable, there are a lot of lugnuts. Drain bolt is one bolt.
Have you thought about trying this?
#9
11-20-2012, 12:54 PM
I really don’t know if they used an impact gun, but I did call up Jiffy and they will rethread it using a new sized tap with a new drain plug that has the same threading as that tap. Will this method be ok? They don’t use a Helicoil insert.
I should have asked what size tap and bolt he will use, but the point is that they didn’t give me a hard time about this. I will most likely take the car back on Friday or Saturday.
Hopefully everything will be fixed and I wont have to dish out any more money, even for a tip!
Thank you all for your comments, and I'll keep everyone updated.
I should have asked what size tap and bolt he will use, but the point is that they didn’t give me a hard time about this. I will most likely take the car back on Friday or Saturday.
Hopefully everything will be fixed and I wont have to dish out any more money, even for a tip!
Thank you all for your comments, and I'll keep everyone updated.