I love to put a good sound system in my car or tweak the suspension, but when it comes to something boring, repetitive and messy like an oil change I outsource to my local garage. I'll take my laptop with me to work in the lobby, my hourly rate is higher than theirs so I even make a little profit.
It takes me about 30mins - 45 minutes to do my oil change, it takes me 20 minutes to go the dealership, another 20 to go home and about an hour wait. So I often save about an hour of my time doing it. There's nothing mess about it, I have an overall I put on when working on cars, about $40 from amazon. I put on gloves, and pre lay paper wipes where the oil might drip. Once I'm done, I take the gloves off, clean up, toss in trash, done. The only extra is that I just have to collect the oil and once a year go dispose it when the city collects hazardous materials which costs me about an hour of work. About 10 oil changes a year and I'm saving 10 hrs. When I do physical work is the time that I take to step out of the computer and think about code.
I've done my own oil changes a few times in the past, but I don't bother anymore, and just have a mechanic deal with it. They're faster at it than I am, and I don't have to drive out somewhere special to dispose of the old oil. It ends up being cheaper to have someone else do it, too. I also don't drive all that much, so I don't have to worry about timeliness here; I can just have them do the oil change when I bring the car in for some other servicing.
I get that you want to do it yourself, and that you've made different value judgments over the various aspects of doing it yourself vs. having someone else do it. But understand that others of us have also made different value judgments, and our situations aren't always the same.
I use the 25k mile synthetic oil. Changing your oil lets in dust and so I only do it when I must, no more often. Even if your use conventional oil, 3k miles is way too often with modern oils (the oil change companies love to say 3k miles as they make a lot of money)
Being European I do my oil change once a year and since the oil disposal location is on the same street as my local garage, I need to drive there anyway so no time lost there. And as I'm working and making money in the lobby while waiting for my car to be ready, I count that as a zero loss.
You might not find it messy, but I do. I don't like doing it. And it costs me the same amount of time and money if I have my mechanic do it, so that is why I outsource it.
I dunno, it takes me about 15 minutes of actual work to change my oil, vs driving to and from the shop and waiting. It’s like a 10x time difference, and I’m still probably doing it with more care than Jiffy Lube.
If I count the time it takes me to properly dispose of the oil it takes me the same amount of time.
And I luckily have a mechanic that I fully trust with my car. They are specialised in my make and model. Even have the correct socket for the oil plug, which I do not have.
Impressive that in addition to doing the work, you also can take the oil somewhere it can be disposed of safely and properly within that 15-minute time frame.
I have about 10 5-quart jugs stashed away in my garage, I’ll eventually bring them to the auto parts store when I already need to go there for something. It’d be silly to make a dedicated trip each time.
