5 Cars To Avoid If You Change Your Own Oil (According To Owners)

Part of the fun of owning a car for some is learning what's under the hood and how to take care of it. Getting your hands dirty can help you better understand the components of your car, what they do, and how they work. It also saves you money spent at the mechanic when you can identify what's wrong and fix it yourself. One of the first things hands-on car enthusiasts want to learn is how to change their own oil, something important for your car's health that is usually quite simple. 

Of course, not every car is set up the same. There are actually some cars that make changing the oil an entire hours-long production. These cars require you to move things around or even take stuff off — and they'll still get oil everywhere in the process. The difficulty of changing a vehicle's oil is a bit subjective — what's seen as interesting or relaxing to some may feel frustrating and extensive to others. This article includes five cars that most people would agree are definitely not as straightforward for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't mean they're the only ones to cause owners to blow a gasket (figuratively, of course). 

The Ford F-150 remains a popular pickup truck for its off-road performance and record-breaking towing capacity. This larger vehicle requires owners to change the oil around 7,500 to 10,000 miles, although it's recommended to do it a bit more often with older models. However, maybe it's best to have the oil changed by an expert, according to many frustrated Ford F-150 owners. 

The Ford F-150 is not necessarily super tricky, but changing the oil has led one certified mechanic to say, "Can confirm as a Ford Tech, most F-150's drain in a way that can make the tech look inept." Multiple owners have reported that the filter and tray (which is meant to neatly collect oil) is not installed in a way that works as intended. It almost seems backwards, with the oil often overflowing off the back of the chute and getting over a lot of parts in the vicinity that are difficult to clean. Sometimes the oil even sprays out and gets on the front wheel (and all down the driveway). A Ford tech explained that they often get around this issue by lowering the truck right onto the oil drain bucket to reduce backsplash.

The Miata may be known for being one of the happiest looking cars ever made, but the oil change process is anything but. Owners were definitely not left smiling while attempting to change the oil of their Mazda MX-5 NB models. The NB has the same four cylinders that Mazda uses across its entire line-up, but the Miata is rear-wheel drive while other Mazda models are front-wheel drive. This means that the filter was moved to an extremely difficult-to-access spot on the side between the shock tower and intake manifold. 

Miata owners have expressed a ton of frustration attempting to reach this area and remove the filter — multiple owners even admitted to getting scars on their hand from trying to do it themselves. To get around this super tight and awkward positioning, it's best to remove the front wheel and intake manifold support to better reach everything. Of course, this makes changing the oil a lot more tedious. "You know it's bad when companies sell an oil filter relocation kit," said one frustrated Miata owner. 

BMWs are said to be not the most oil change friendly, and the BMW i3 is no exception. This is not a car to do an oil change on if you're a beginner. Owners report an abundance of tedious and difficult steps that may make it easier to just bring to a shop. The oil filter is located in the rear and requires a lot of maneuvering to reach, including removing the protective panel to get to the oil fill cap. To get to the filter, jacking the car up or using ramps is recommended so you can unscrew the filter from the little hole it's in — this may take a proprietary wrench to do, which costs a pretty penny on top of the already pricey filter.

Filling the engine can also prove frustrating since the angle causes the oil to spill onto the cargo area quite frequently. Putting it all back together is another step in misery that might be even worse than the initial oil change. To make it all the more miserable, the i3 often doesn't even require the oil change you just tortured yourself doing. Said one BMW driver, "The worst part is the engine usually doesn't need an oil change when you do this. The i3 has no hour meter for this little engine, they say to change it on a mileage interval, during which it might not have run very much."

The Fiat 500 Abarth is a car that's often associated with torturous oil changes. There's some debate over the best way to get it done, but every way mentioned sounds a bit exhausting and not straightforward enough for our liking. Most of the oil change strategies require disassembly, which is usually what ends up putting a car on a list like this. 

The Abarth should be jacked up if you want to avoid crawling underneath the car and risking injury. Unfortunately, jacking up the Fiat 500 Abarth is a challenge in of itself due to the car having a lack of good spots for the process. Once the car is lifted, you'll need to take off the plastic splash shield under the engine to access its drain plug. Then, take out the air intake hose to create more space so you can better reach the filter housing that's face up at the bottom of the engine. Use a ratchet extender or something of the sort to take off the plug, which is reportedly quite difficult — at this point it's often getting oil all over the engine and others have mentioned the oil getting all over the crossmember in the same area. 

Putting the oil filter back is another step that Fiat owners find beyond annoying. By then, you'll be beyond the point of exasperation and just want to get it over with. Oh, and good luck finding 5W-40 full synthetic oil at a shop near you. Recalled one Fiat owner on Reddit: "I did my Abarth once. The entire time I was picturing some Italian engineer named Luca who designed it and laughs himself to sleep every night picturing people trying to contort themselves into weird shapes to get to the filter without taking everything apart." 

Subaru models are a bit of a controversial pick for this list, but after seeing so many people complain about one very big issue, it couldn't be ignored. A lot of people actually mention the Subaru as one of the most straightforward oil changes, depending on the model. You don't need to jack the car up, and there's nothing in the way that requires a ton of disassembly. So why is it on this list? Multiple Subaru owners have expressed concern with the "ring of fire." 

Basically, certain older models of Subaru have a hot pipe wrapped around the engine and tight around the filter. It's already a bit annoying that you need to drop the underbody tray to get to the filter, but the real complaint is that the oil filter is basically dangerously hot to deal with. For example, the oil filter on the 2011 Subaru Outback is right in the middle of the exhaust manifold, and that hot metal can really burn if the car is still warm. It's just poor design to risk burning people to do something as simple as do an oil change. "You got to go in with a thermal or may get burned," said one Subaru owner.