Today was the day I decided to change the oil in my '11 XLT EcoBoost for the first time since I took delivery last April. I didn't see this already posted, so thought I'd walk through the procedure here and show some pics that might help others. As others have pointed out, the engine on the EB is wrapped up pretty good underneath -- and it's not obvious at first how to get access to the things that one needs to get to in order to do the oil change.

OK. So first, it's good to mention that once you know the procedure, getting to the oil drain plug and the oil filter is fairly easy -- and removing the covers to expose these requires no tools of any kind, just your fingers.

There are three areas that have covers on them that you need to open up:

• The rubber flap cover underneath the radiator (four white plastic thumbscrews - turn 90 degrees to remove)
• A rubber cover in a square access hole in the sheet metal shield beneath the engine (turn 90 degrees and it comes right out)
• A large removable cover underneath the transmission (four thumbscrews that you unscrew a few rotations to remove)

Here's a pic of the rubber flap cover under the radiator, toward the driver's side, showing the four white thumbscrews.



You twist those 90 degrees counterclockwise to remove, then the flap comes down as shown here. And voila, there is the oil filter. You can also see that underneath the filter, there is a black plastic catch pan with a little "gutter" on its front. Oil that spills when you remove the filter from the engine will drain out of this gutter (or its companion gutter on the rear).



Here's another view of the flap from a bit farther away.



OK, so that's how you access the oil filter. Next, there are two black rubber square inserts in the sheetmetal shield underneath the engine. Of those, the one on the driver's side is where the rear "gutter" in the catch pan under the oil filter will drain the spilled oil from the old filter when you remove it. In my case, all of the spilled oil drained from this rear gutter (I had the truck up on ramps) and none from the front gutter, but your mileage may vary. So here are two pics, one with the rubber inserts in place and another with them removed -- as I mentioned above, they just twist 90 degrees and then come right out. Note that you don't need to remove both of them, only the one toward the driver's side...I just wanted to see what was through the other hole...turned out not to be anything specific. Note: the upper edges of these holes were very sharp -- apparently Ford doesn't dress the edges after the stamper has die-cut the holes. I took a flat file and dulled the edges to avoid cutting my hands when wiping out the area with paper towels (some oil from the rear gutter dripped onto the top of the sheet around the inside of the hole).




And finally, here's a picture of the rear cover that you need to remove in order to access the oil drain plug. It's held in by four thumbscrews, basically one in each corner. They twist counterclockwise a few turns by hand and then they're out. Also is a close-up of one of the thumbscrews, and a shot of the cover after it's out from underneath the truck.





Once that rear cover is off, you have easy access to the drain plug:



When you remove that plug to drain the old oil, you definitely want your catch pan pretty much toward the passenger-side tire. The oil comes out of there like a freight train and lands almost all of the way over by the passenger tire.

OK, so draining the old oil is pretty standard once you have the access cover off. The old filter came out about how one would expect (as with all new engines, it was on there tight as hell); I used a strap-type wrench to get it loose. And like I said above, once the filter is unscrewed, you'll get spillage...so you want your oil catch pan underneath at least the rear gutter (square hole in the sheetmetal) and possibly a catch pan under the front gutter as well. I didn't get anything from the front gutter with the truck being up on ramps...maybe the front gutter gets more flow if you have the truck level (as when it's up on a lift rather than ramps). For the new filter, I used a Motorcraft FL-500S per the latest recommendations from Ford (and elsewhere in this forum). Six quarts of Mobil-1 0W-30 synthetic and the job was done. Started up the engine and looked at the rear side of the filter from underneath, to verify there were no leaks:



Replaced the rear cover, square rubber covers and the front flap, then got in the cab to reset the oil life indicator back to 100%. Here are the pics showing the sequence.







And that's that. Hope this is useful to others.

- Randy

 

Nicely done! Thank you for the info.

 

Good write up! I thought about doing this myself but never got around to it.

 

Good write up.

Why does it give you an option to reset the oil life to anything other than 100%?

Do the dealers set it at 70% just so people come in to get an oil change more often?

 

Yeah, good point. I read in the manual that "100%" gives you the full 7500 mile change interval before the display starts nagging you about needing to change the oil. If you want to be nagged sooner than that, you can set the initial life to something below 100% and it will start nagging you proportionally sooner.

With synthetic, I change at pretty much the 7500 mile interval so set to 100%.

 

Good info - I didn't remove the rubber cover on the front last time and I really beat up my arms trying to get to the oil filter from the rear...

 

Nice Write-Up

I changed oil in my ecoboost last wekend, your right on with report

My metal shield didnt have the black square inserts in it, don't know if Ford didn't install or if they fell out

Nice Job

 

Thanks Randy, great write-up and pics.

 

Mine does not have them either, it seems like a hit or miss thing.

 

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Based on how loose mine seemed to be, I could definitely see them falling out at some point...guess I won't sweat too much if that ends up happening!

 

Mine either. I raised this question with the dealer and we checked several ECO on the lot and none of them had the rubber inserts either. Might have been eliminated on later trucks.

 

I ordered my truck in January before the Eco was released. It reached the dealership towards the end of March so mine should be pretty early in the production run. I think it might be a 4x4 vs 4x2 thing as there might be two different versions of the under body shield. The pictures above seem to come from a 4x2 since I do not see the CV joints behind the wheels.

Either way, I'm not worried about it. The plugs really don't seem to do much.

 

Correct, it's a 4x2.

 

I think the reason for the different % options is for people who don't drive a lot.I know my parents don't drive many miles in 6 months so the oil % at 0 comes up long before the 6 months or 3,500 miles is up.

Later Mark.

 

Thanks, I am going to change mine this coming Wednesday and didn't have a clue as to what to expect under there. This has helped a lot, for sure.