How to Change Oil and Filter on 1997-2001 Toyota Camry

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In this video, we're going to be working with our 1998 Toyota Camry 2.2-liter. We're going to show you how to change your oil and filter. This should be done just about every 3500 miles if you use conventional oil in your vehicle.

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Here are the items you'll need for this repair: 14mm socket, ratchet, torque wrench, paper towels, drain bucket, jack and jack stands

Open the hood and secure the hood prop. Remove your oil cap by spinning if off counterclockwise. Place it somewhere safe. We're using a lift to raise and support our vehicle but this job can easily be done in the driveway on a jack and jack stand.

Now, when you get underneath your vehicle, you'll notice that you have two oil pans under here. This can be a little bit confusing, however. The best way to tell is when we removed our oil cap from the passenger side, which is where our engine is on this vehicle while our transmission, which also has an oil pan, is over on the driver's side. We'll be removing this 14 millimeter drain plug on the passenger side, not the Allen key here on the driver's side, which would drain our transmission and cause a whole bunch of issues when we refilled our motor and had an empty transmission.

We'll use a 14 millimeter socket and ratchet to remove this drain plug with our drain bucket underneath. Now, when the drain plug gets to the end of its threads, you'll want to lift up and away to try to keep the oil from getting on you. Keep a good grip on that plug so we don't drop it into the drain bucket. Reinstall your drain plug once your pan is finished draining out. Torque the drain plug bolt to 27 foot-pounds.

Once your oil's drained and you've reinstalled your drain plug, we'll remove the oil filter from the top. This is close to the exhaust manifold, so be very careful working in here because this gets very hot. Now, you may need to use a pair of oil filter pliers to get in there and twist this off, but usually you can just grab 'em and remove 'em by hand by twisting 'em counterclockwise.

This runs down the front of the engine. There could be oil left in there, so make sure you have a drain bucket underneath just in case. Put some fresh oil on your finger, and lubricate the gasket on the end of your oil filter. This will keep it from getting stuck against the engine and make it easy to remove next time. Make sure that this gasket came off and isn't still stuck to the mating surface. If it is, peel it off. Install your new filter as tight as you can by hand.

Put a funnel into the fill hole on your valve cover to keep the mess to a minimum. Fill the engine with 3.8 quarts of your favorite 5W-30 motor oil. Ours has a lot of miles on it and has always been run on conventional, so we'll use that. If you keep yours on a synthetic or a synthetic blend, that's fine too. Now, there's roughly 1,000 milliliters in a quart, so we'll bring our oil level down until we have 200 milliliters left in the bottle. That'll be just about 3.8 quarts. It's actually just shy of 1,000 millimeters in a quart, but that difference isn't going to matter.

Here you can see we have about 200 milliliters left, which means our engine has 3.8 quarts in it. We'll fire it up and confirm that that level's correct. If it is, we'll cap this and keep it in the trunk in case we ever need some oil down the road. Remove the funnel, and reinstall your oil cap.

Start the vehicle and allow it to run until the oil pressure comes up to the normal range, at which point we'll shut it down. Allow the oil to run back into the pan and check our fluid level. Our particular vehicle does not have an oil gauge on it, so we'll just fire it up, let it run for a few seconds, and then shut it down to make sure that the oil fully fills our filter and check the level from there. After you've allowed it to sit for a minute, remove the dipstick. Wipe it off, reinstall it, and check your oil level. We need to add just a little bit of oil so we'll top it off. Check it again, and then we're good to go.

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