i went to check my oil yesterday, and the dipstick handle, the little circular ring in the end of the dipstick where you hook your finger in to pull it out, broke off. it is made of plastic, and the heat from the engine must have deteriorated the plastic.

why is this so? it used to be a dipstick was one solid strip of metal, with measuring marks scribed at the sump end, and bent into a semi-circle at the other so you could get a grip on it and pull it out. just one part, one single piece of indestructible steel. my dipstick has a little hole drilled in the upper end, a plastic circular handle that fits over the end, and a little pin that fits through the hole to hold the handle in place. when the plastic cracks, the whole thing crumbles away when you give a tug on it. furthermore, the dipstick fell back into the pipe/sleeve and i needed a needle-nose pliers to get it out, i was lucky i was able to reach it at all.

i'm no engineer, but maybe one of you techy motorheads could enlighten me...just what could these dildoes have possibly been thinking when they came up with this idiotic idea? surely it isn't more cost- or safety-effective to design a dipstick with three separate parts, two of which are prone to fail.

the fix: i took a circular metal wire ring from my key chain and slid the wire end into the hole until the ring was secure, serving both as a handle and as a stopper so the dipstick can't slide down the pipe and wind up wrapped in a death spiral with my crankshaft.

c'mon guys, do i have to think of everything?