I just did my first oil change using my new Pela 6000 Oil Extractor. Thought I would share my experience in case anyone else is thinking about going down this path.

I bought the Pela because I don't have much space to work on my car, plus the ground spoiler on the front makes it impossible to use my current set of ramps. The hope was that I would be able to change my oil without jacking up the car and without getting too dirty. The verdict? It works pretty well, but not quite as well as I'd hoped.

Don't get me wrong, the Pela itself works exactly as advertised. I ran my car for 5 minutes to heat up the oil (not sure why, this 5w-20 runs like water even at room temperature), stuck the tube down the dipstick, pumped the pump about 15 times, and then waited for about 15 minutes w/ an occaisonal extra pump. I sucked out just over 3 qts which is a little less than I had hoped for but I chalk it up to (1) I was a little low to begin with and (2) I was parked on the side of a road that had a bit of a grade. I think its important to do this on a perfectly flat grade. Its nice that the oil ends up in a ready-to-transport container; I used to have to pour my collection pan into a transport container for disposal.

The main downside is that the oil filter on the Fit isn't as easy to get to as I had hoped and I still ended up getting a bit dirty. I had to use the collection pan to collect the spillage from the filter. And I still had to get on the ground some. Hopefully the next change will go easier since I'll have a better feel of how to get to the filter. Also, I suspect that this would be easier on a Base Fit w/o the ground effects.

Conclusion: An oil extractor isn't a miracle oil-changer in a bottle, but I would definitely recommend it for people that don't have much space to work on their car or don't have ramps.

-J