Oil Change Vacuum Pump REVIEW – By Hand vs Electric
I’ve been using a 12v electric oil change vacuum pump to do the oil changes. It works great but there are a few issues with it.
Electric Oil Pump Issues
First is the speed. Even when I have the oil warmed up in the engine the process still takes around 30 minutes to vacuum out the 4 litres of oil in the sump. I’d prefer it if the process was quicker.
Second issue is the faff of setting everything up. The cables that connect to the battery are not the longest so the oil pump needs to be balanced on the engine somewhere in a way that does bend the suction pipes too much. Again, it’s a bit of a faff getting the pipes that go into the sump setup and sorting out the pipe that goes into the container for the waste oil.
And the third issue is that the pump is noisy. If you have neighbours, thirty minutes of this pump going I expect can be a bit annoying.
Manual Oil Vacuum Pump
To address all of these issues I invested in a hand pumped vacuum eh pump.
There are no cables so that’s one less thing to deal with. The pump is nice and big, I think the capacity is around 6 litres. This means I can put it on the pavement and it stays there no problem. It’s very stable. No more balancing an electric pump on the engine.
And because the pump and the waste oil container are self contained, there is one less pipe to worry about.
The cherry on the cake is the noise. There isn’t any.
Sounds like a win-win-win situation but there are a few negatives with the manual vacuum oil change pump.
The Negatives
It’s needs effort. I need to pump it up and down so it generates vacuum in the container. The mechanism is nice so no issues there you just need to maintain the vacuum for obvious reasons. It doesn’t need to be pumped constantly but I’d say you need to pump 30% of the time. If you want to do it quicker, 60% of the time. I don’t think there is much benefit pumping more because there is a limit to how much vacuum it can build and how fast the oil can come out of the hoses.
Another negative is the cost. The manual pump cost around 70 Euro. The electric pumps are 30 Euro.
And that’s basically it for the negatives.
Manual Vacuum Pump – How Fast?
I said the 12v pump takes around 30 minutes. The manual pump takes around half that. A win for speed and convenience.
Is It Worth It?
Is the manual pump worth the money over the electric pump? I suppose it depends how often you will be using it. If you are changing the oil every 5000km I’d say definitely. But honestly, because it’s less messy and faster and quieter, I thought it was worth it after the first use.
Other Benefits
That’s the oil change part of it but there are some added benefits.
The built in waste container is graduated so you can easily see how much liquid you have pulled out. This takes the guess work out of how much oil is left in the sump.
And the other benefit is you can use it for other things. I’ve used it to change power steering fluid. I suppose I could have used the electric pump but the faff of setting up put me off the job. With the manual pump it’s fast to setup and do.
The manual pump also comes with attachments to bleed brakes. Which I was not expecting. No need to have two people bleeding the brakes. Just keep the brake fluid reservoir topped up and stop pumping when the air has stopped and/or you are getting fresh brake fluid from the brake caliper.
In Summary – Vacuum Oil Pump (Manual Version)
In summary the manual pump is a win. It costs a bit more than the electric but for all the reasons above I think it’s much better. And with less things to go wrong it should also last longer.
I bought my pump from Vevor but there looks to be identical ones on ebay.
