Who says you need to replace nylon drain plug washers?!

[Cubey]

I'm sure it had another 5 years life, eh? Why replace what is still good? New nylon or copper washers cost a whopping 50 cents to a dollar!! Why waste the money?

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Ok, all kidding aside, does this look like the work of a $20 oil change place? It took me 15-20 minutes to get it off because I wanted to preserve it as much as possible to show the incompetence. The bolt was embeded in the washer! It made it a little hard to get the socket on the bolt.

Now it has a pretty new copper washer.

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[Clb]

The joys of low grade lowlife trailer trash previous owners...
Run it till it pukes!
Surprise it ain't got no rtv on it!

 

[Cubey]

The joys of low grade lowlife trailer trash previous owners...
Run it till it pukes!
Surprise it ain't got no rtv on it!

RTV costs more than half a dozen nylon washers, but yeah I get what you're saying.

 

[Knuckledragger]

I have always wondered why the oil plugs were tightened to 200 lbs/ft. torque. They only need to be as tight as necessary to keep from leaking. I cannot count how many were cross threaded or stripped because of over-tightening.

As the son of a plumber, I learned that when shutting off a faucet, you "turn the handle until the water stops running" not, "turn the handle until it won't turn any more." All that does is kill the washer life, just like the nylon or copper oil plug washer.

 

[Clb]

I'll add air tools kill more threads than simple over torque has... When lazy *** starts the bolt with the gun instead of by hand.
A light touch goes a LONG way.
As does annealing

+1 on the plumber anecdote

 

[Cubey]

That's one thing I looked at, the threads. Thankfully they were fine. It tightened down fine with a copper washer. I just "feel" tighten and I've never stripped or had a drain plug come out. I have torqed before but eh if you are careful enough it's probably not needed.

 

[DrCharles]

A torque wrench doesn't help if you have no concept of the proper feel vs. bolt size...
Story time. (Caution: non-Ford content)

I have two BMW's with the same V8 engine, but the '97 has a small plug that calls for 18 ft-lb, and the '98-on is a large one (44 ft-lb). One day I took the '97 to the local oil-change place (which is usually pretty good with my cars) that had a new kid in the pit. They even checked their computer database for the proper torque - which of course was listed as 44 ft-lb regardless of year! So the dumb kid tried tightening it to that, and stripped it. He tried to cover by saying, "I thought 44 was kind of high for that little bolt so I stopped at 40 and it stripped anyway", as if that makes any sense. I did get them a copy of the factory manual's "Tightening Torque" page so they could update their computer.

So I was stuck there for an hour while they dropped the lower oil pan (actually easy to do on that engine, just tedious with 25 small bolts), and I held the plug with vise grips while they ground off the head. Turns out that the plug was stripped, fortunately not the female thread boss welded to the pan. They put a new plug in with a nylon washer instead of the copper crush ring it should have. Still should work once, anyway.

But it always had a little drip from the plug. At my next oil change I handed them a "Genuine BMW" plug and crush ring, and had them install it (at 18 ft-lb!)... STILL had a tiny leak.

I'd given them enough chances... in my garage I jacked it up, got underneath, drained the oil and found that they had notched the sealing face of the boss with the edge of the grinding wheel, just enough that the crush ring wouldn't seal completely. I tried to fix it and made a mess of it (I'm not a good welder) so I ended up buying a good used pan on Ebay for about $45. NOW it's dry underneath. I considered sending them a bill for the pan but decided to chalk it up to experience.

 

[chillman88]

@DrCharles that's why I don't trust mechanics. Yes there are some good eggs out there but the hacks are spread real thick. I'm sure it's only enhanced by "office politics" though.

They were lucky it was an easy pan to drop! He'd have been in trouble if they had to pull the engine to get the pan out!

 

[Cubey]

The Haynes manual I was using to rebuild a Dodge 1 ton van front end called for something like 200 ft lbs on some suspension bolt. Needless to say, it snapped and I had to buy another. At least it wasn't something expensive, $5-10. It was a serious misprint.

 

[Macrobb]

<_< My drain plugs look similar to that. As long as it doesn't noticeably leak*, send it!

(*When your front main and rear main both leak, it's pretty hard to tell if the drain plug is leaking. Might be a good idea to fix thst someday... But at least I don't need to worry about rust!)