I mounted a 5.9 gallon propane take to the underside of Devandra. Its this tank, meant for a Volkswagon Eurovan. This project took about 3 days from start to finish. Welding the brackets would have been much faster, but I made it work without having to hire someone to weld them. Instead I took part in the painstaking process of drilling thick-gauge hardened steel. I went through 2 bits, one of which was $17. I learned that to drill metal, you need the right bits (expensive!), to go very slowly and take breaks (about 15 seconds of drilling, then let the bit cool off until you can hold it in your hand) and use a cutting oil!
The Brackets need to be 3" tall. The tank is 8" in diameter but the mounting lips are mounted an inch higher then center. The brackets I got where 6" L brackets. In the photo I cut one end of one of the brackets a little shorter then 3" (to make up for the gauge of the bracket itself). Obviously I am going to need to cut more off both brackets in order for a a second set to fit on the right side.
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Trying to keep things moving along for the website here in the middle of moving and general life stuff. Here is the oil change procedure on a Ford Transit with the 3.5 Ecoboost. I suspect other engines will be very similar but obviously the locations for the drain plug and filter may look a little different. Ford seems to indicate 7,500 mile oil changed with this engine. That seems high. But then if you go by the gauge cluster prompt, some are getting as much as 10-12k between changes. No thanks. I did 6,500 miles for my first change and that was a little longer then I would have hoped. First start with what you will need
Start by removing the drain plug as seen here. Its the one with the blue mark. Make sure your drain pan is positioned under it and keep in mind the stream of oil will shoot out. Be sure to take off the fill cap on the engine cover so that air can flow in, letting all the old oil out. Put the plug back making sure it is nice and snug but don't over tighten it! Next remove the filter. It looks like a little black kitchen plate in this photo, upper center It is a very tight space. From the factory I needed a wrench to get it off and the space is so tight it was extremely difficult to make my pliers style oil wrench work. Next time I will use a ratchet style oil wrench. Be sure to re-position the drain pan underneath the filter. Make sure the black rubber seal came off with the old filter, sometimes they can remain installed even though the filter is off. If you install the new filter with an extra rubber seal, all the oil will leak out in a hurry once it is under pressure with the engine running! Once all the oil is drained out, install the new filter. I like to pour a bit of new oil in the new filter before I install it so that there is oil ready to go when the engine starts up. Just hand-tighten the filter. Screw it on until the rubber seal is touching, then 1/2 to 3/4 around more. Tightening it more will make it very hard to remove next time. Now fill up with new oil! Official capacity is 5.9 quarts so you should have about .1 quarts remaining. Replace your oil cap. Now reset your oil light. With the ignition on, but the engine not started, press and hold both the gas and the break and wait for the prompts on the gauge cluster screen. Always good to check your work, start the engine and have a look to make sure there are no leaks. (Life Pro Tip; use the now empty bottles of oil to store the old oil from the drainpan.) Now have a beer! Update:Here is a report I got back from Blackstone Labs. For those unfamiliar, they do oil analysis. You simply take a sample when you change your oil in their handy container, send it to them and they report back to you. The process is easy and affordable. Well worth the ease of mind. As you can see below, they include technical details and well as a nice little translation for those of use who speak English better then the languages of chemistry/mechanical engineering. Being used to higher performance cars (my car before this was a tuned Ford Focus ST!) longer oil change intervals scare me, but with the knowledge of this report, I may just wait longer until my next oil change!
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