I do this for just about every car I’ve owned – an oil change blog. It’s mostly for myself so I can look up all the torque specs easily in the future, but… maybe someone out there besides me gets something out of these?
Anyways, Mona hit 2500 miles recently and that seemed like a decent amount of time and distance to leave the factory fill oil in place. Time to flush it out.
NDs apparently like 0w20 oil. There’s likely all manner of opinion out there as to which one is best. Mobil1 has always worked well for me, so I thought I’d give it a go in Ramona.
After jacking up the car, removing the belly pan is the first order of business. It’s metal and of decent gauge… and it has NINE bolts holding it in place.
Nine.
No, that won’t be annoying at all over the next many years of ND ownership. At least I have an air ratchet to make quick work of them.
And right under that belly pan is the drain plug and filter. Just right there. Easy to grab. No mess to drip all over frame rails or belly pans. It’s fantastic!
The drain plug needs the same 17mm socket as the NB and NC to remove. Once the oil is drained, torque the plug to 23-30 ft/lbs. And replace the crush washer with a fresh one if so desired/required.
The oil filter is easily removed due to the location. The angry robots at the factory really torqued the snot out of mine, so I used a wrench to remove the old one.
The orientation of the filter rewards and enables pre-filling of the replacement filter. Remember to grease the gasket on the new filter before installing to prevent it from tearing as it gets tightened down. And if you are so inclined, the factory torque spec for the oil filter is 107-141 INCH/lbs. Be careful and use a tiny torque wrench that does inch pounds.
Notice how low that filter hangs? Because of this you can’t use an extended size filter for the ND. A longer filter will touch that belly pan and not allow it to bolt back on. And that’s a bad thing.
I tried it. I always use the extended MX-6 sized filter on Sharka and tried to use one on Mona. I was more than a bit disappoint when the longer filter couldn’t fit.
Here’s a quicky list of ND sized oil filters:
Wix & Napa Gold – x7002 (57002, 27002, 7002)
K&N – HP1008
Mobil 1 – M1-108, M1-108A
Purolator – PL14612, L14612
After pre-filling the oil filter, add 4 quarts of 0w20 to the engine. Put the cap on, fire the engine, and let it run for 30 seconds to get oil circulating and check for leaks. Then kill it and wait a minute to check oil level. Factory spec is 4.5 quarts from empty, so you may have to add a bit to the 4 quarts added earlier.
The NINE bolts holding that belly pan on like to be torqued to 24-28 ft/lbs. I just zipped them back on with my air ratchet.
The ND has an oil maintenance monitor… and you can reset it using the infotainment screen! This is great and requires no tools.
From the home screen you go to the far left option marked APPLICATIONS. Then drill down…
Applications > Vehicle Status Monitor > Maintenance > Oil Change > Reset
You can also change the maintenance interval. Wanna do 12k miles? Set it that way. 3000? Sure. Just change it in “Oil Life”.
I’m recycling an image from my NC fluid change blog here. This is my oil containment device. It holds something like 16 quarts and stands on the end, out of the way, when not in use. It’s great. I got it at my local O’Reilly’s for about $25. I highly recommend it.
Whatever you use, please recycle your fluids. Any auto parts store will let you dump a container of used oil in the back.
And that’s it! Time for a test drive
Thanks for the information in this blog – I always reference this whenever I’m going to do an oil change (especially the list of oil filters that fit). Thank you again!
Of course!! Thanks for asking me to restore it.