OK, If y'all must know . . . My drain plug fell out and I dumped ALL of my oil on I-59 just north of the Alabama state line. Well, not all of it went on the road; a good bit of it went on Anthony's 98 Mexican Beetle. Despite that, Anthony still placed First in Class in for Beetle '68 and Up Stock. It may have been the shine from Homer's oil that put him over the top . . .
Lessons Learned:
It doesn't take long for 3 quarts of oil to run out of a M14 hole in the bottom of your engine.
Judging by Anthony's bug, you don't want to ride behind someone who's lost their oil plug.
Truck Stops are THE most expensive place on earth to buy oil.
A Beetle lug bolt has the same threads as a sump plate plug . . . it's way too long though. A 73 Bus has lug studs and nuts, not bolts (I've owned this bus for over two years and I never realized that).
The seal for a truck to trailer air line coupling on top of a large washer makes the lug bolt short enough to use and makes a pretty good seal.
A strip from a thin plastic bag makes decent short term thread sealer if you don't have any teflon tape availble.
If you clean out your bus last minute for a trip, you'll need something that you unloaded (I took the blown engine from the Bug Fair adventure complete with the drain plug and most of my tools out of Homer at 11:00 PM the night before).
When you know for two weeks that you need to change your oil and don't do it, you'll kick yourself when the drain plug someone else tightened falls out.
VW . . . It's not a car. It's an adventure! :cool:
