2006 Pontiac Vibe
I did some work on Lo’s Vibe this weekend. Kevin kindly invited me over to his dads to enjoy the comfort of a two car garage even though it was pretty warm around here for January.
We did an oil change and replaced the spark plugs. She had 120k km on the vehicle and it was a little early for the plugs but it made sense to do since Lo was concerned about a drop in fuel mileage.
I should also replace her air filter and clean the MAF sensor but I’ll leave those jobs for warmer days it’s now dipped back down into the negatives.
Oil change is super easy.
I picked up a 4.4L $20 jug of 5W-30 Pennzoil Platinum synthetic from Walmart. Got the filter from NAPA where I picked up the plugs. I could find the iridium tipped NGK’s online for about $12.50 each. NAPA was able to come down from their $22/plug price to about $15.50 after I mentioned PartSource had them on sale for 10% off. This is about what they would cost online with shipping and besides I now had them in hand and could return them if I changed my mind. Perfect.
I needed an oil wrench to get off the oil filter – bought a metal one from NAPA instead of the crappy plastic ones or a generic strap one – and a new crush ring for the oil drain plug. The only tools needed are your standard ratchet set with extensions and spark plug sockets should do. A torque wrench would be good for the plugs to go in at 25N.m. If not put them in hand tight and then 3/4 of a turn more. I also put a bit of anti-seize on the upper half of the threads of the new plugs that went in.
All the holding blots for the plastic engine cover and the coil packs are 10mm heads. The drain plug for the oil was a 14mm wrench and the oil filter is at the front of the engine near the drain plug. Really easy to get to once you are able to get under the car. It is a vertical mount filter – like a cup – so you’ll have some spillage under it when you get a few turns into removing the filter. I guess this is because of how the oil pump feeds the filter – though I’m not really sure.
The problem with the spark plugs was that the plastic wire harness which is behind the plug coils bowed and interfered with removing the coil packs from the two right side plugs. Have someone help you push the wire harness back against the block to get the coil packs off. You could try removing the wire harness, but I was able to get them off once we realized we had a clearance issue with the plastic harness.
Since gas mileage was an issue and I brought along my air compressor to blow off any dirt and grit from the coil plugs (before removing them one at a time) I checked the tire pressure and brought them all up to 32psi.