How to Change Oil in a Square Body Chevy

Hi, my name is Adam Wollschlager. I have been working on the farm my whole life, so I am pretty good at maintaining farm equipment and vehicles. I am going to show you how you can save a little bit of money by doing something yourself that you would probably have someone else do. Today I’m going to show you in ten steps how to change the oil in a square body chevy.

First off, make sure everything that is needed is ready to go before beginning to change the oil. The things that are needed are an oil filter, 5 quarts of 10W-30 High Mileage Oil, an open ended wrench, an oil filter wrench, a funnel, a pan or bucket to drain the oil in, and probably ramps or a jack and jack stands to drive or lift the vehicle off the ground.

When everything that you will need is ready, start up the pickup and run it for a good 5 to 10 minutes to warm up the oil. Doing this will help the oil drain out faster.

Once the pickup is good and warmed up, drive it onto the ramps or jack stands. Usually the park brakes don’t work too good on these old pickups, so if the pickup is a manual put it in gear so it won’t roll away. If the pickup is an automatic then just put it in park.

Next, start to drain the oil. Go underneath the engine, and find the oil plug, located at one of the lowest points of the engine. Place the bucket underneath the oil plug to drain the oil into.

Begin to change the oil, find a wrench or socket to fit the oil plug. An open ended wrench will work the best so it doesn’t slip off and round off the plug. Loosen the plug, then take it out by hand. If you can do this without getting oil on your hands then you’ve probably changed oil more than me.

When the oil is drained out, locate the oil filter, it will be on the side of the engine, or down below the pickup next to the drain plug, which is where mine is located. Take the oil filter wrench and loosen the oil filter, then unscrew it by hand, and dump the old oil that is left in it into the bucket.

Once the old filter is off, get the new filter and put it on right away so dust/dirt doesn’t go inside the oil pump. On the new filter there will be a rubber washer, take a little bit of oil and cover the rubber o-ring with it, this will help the filter seal up tight to the oil pump. Now hand tighten the filter onto the motor until you can’t get it any tighter, then take the oil filter wrench and tighten it, there will be directions on the filter to how much to tighten it.

When you get the filter back on, put the oil plug back in. The reason I wait until after the filter is because a little bit of oil will slowly run out, and I like to get as much of it out as possible. Hand tighten the oil plug, then tighten it with the open ended wrench or socket until it feels snug. Don’t overtighten the plug because you may strip out the threads inside the oil pan or round off the head of the oil plug.

Once everything is put back together, add the amount of oil that you need. To add the oil open the oil cap on top of the motor, put the funnel in, and pour in the 5 quarts of oil into the motor. Once it is getting towards the end of pouring in the oil, check the dipstick to make sure there isn’t too much oil, or not enough.

Finally, now that the right amount of oil is in, put the cap back on, and the dipstick back in. Then go and start the engine. Once the engine is running, go walk around and look over the motor to make sure that there isn’t any oil leaking. If there is turn off the engine immediately and locate where the leak is coming from.