Some time back I made an attachment for my shop vac that makes it easy to suck fluids like motor oil, gear oil and the like out of engines or other machinery.? Today I used it to suck the old gear oil out of my bandsaw's transmission, and it occurred to me that others might find the idea useful.? Consider the always-messy job of replacing motor oil in those small engine appliances like lawnmowers -- this guy makes it easy and mess-free.? Same for those badly-designed drain ports for things like ATF and power steering fluids.

I've attached a photo of it:



It consists of a bucket with a decent lid, a few pipe/tubing fittings, two lengths of plastic tubing and a shop vac.? The basic principle is that the shop vac pulls a vacuum inside the bucket, and the fluid is sucked into the bucket via a plastic tube dipped into whatever you want to empty out.? The waste fluid drops into the bucket, not the shop vac so it is easy to dump into a jug for recycling or sending off to the dump.

To make it I drilled two holes in the bucket lid -- a small one for a brass fitting with a ferrule on one end and threaded on the other.? The threaded end is screwed into the hole.? This is where the waste oil enters.? The second hole is larger, made with a hole saw and a plastic bulkhead fitting is installed.? I also turned an aluminum sleeve and glued it into the external side to adapt it to the hose end of my shop vac.? Different shop vacs have different-sized hose ends so other folks who try this need to size that part accordingly.

It took about 30 seconds to suck most of the gear oil out of the transmission box.

If I were to make another one I would make a reinforcing ring out of aluminum or steel and size it to fit about halfway down the inside of the bucket.? Cheap plastic buckets tend to collapse under the force of the vacuum.....

The pumpkins play no part in the fluid sucker's operation :).

Mark