The New "What did you do with your Z today" (with off topic replies) XVV

Originally Posted by JARblue

Couple of tips for ya:

1. If your floor jack was remotely close to reaching the front jack point, trying driving up on a short piece of 2x6. This allows me to reach my front jack point just barely scraping the front spoiler. The first few pumps of the handle are very short but it'll get there eventually. I imagine one of those rapid pump jacks would make quicker work of it.

2. There is a flap at the back of the undershroud. Remove the rearmost four screws in the undershroud, and flip it under towards the front of the car. My flap is trained and just hangs vertically now. Use a bungee cord or other means of holding the flap back to keep it out of the way of draining oil; this will also help train it to stay out of your way for future oil changes.





My limited experience with the ZSpeed undershroud is not the greatest. Otherwise, I would have one already. First, that hatch is tiny; I can barely reach through it and unscrew the oil filter. I am concerned that it would be even worse with a thermostatic sandwich plate for an oil cooler. Also, I have found that the Z must be level when you do an oil change through that opening; if you just have the front jacked up, some of the oil will not drain out of the opening and instead run down the oil pan slightly to where it drips onto topside of the shroud to leak out various openings further back due to the tilt of the car.

IMO the flap on the OEM undershroud is only slightly more cumbersome due to having to restrain it from getting in the way of the draining oil flow, there are only 4 screws, and there is much more room for unscrewing those oil filters that the idiot dealer mechanic decided needed to be torqued to 180 ft-lbs