Never wash your dipstick!

I'd assume this was tongue-in-cheek, but you never know...

 

Actually, my 2000 Tundra had a recall where Toyota mailed me a longer dipstick in a long tube.

 

so what's the problem with washing the dipstick? I wipe mine really good every time I check it...

 

i allways wax mine. after all i dont want the oil to stain it.

 

Actually it shrunk. It was too short so some people were overfilling trying to hit the full mark.

Early Tundra Engine Oil Dipstick FYI - Toyota Tundra Forums : Tundra Solutions Forum

 

mine must've come with one of those long dipsticks ...

 

Washing the dipstick is fine. Just don't dry it on the high heat setting, that's what will cause your shrinkage.

 

I thought it was cold that caused shrinkage.

 

That reminds me, no seriously:

Drafting conveyor trusses, you had to come up with sliding base connections every so often, or a every connection depending on the situation. A 72' truss for example (9 x 8' panels) would have length change of maybe 3/8" of an inch, between the extremes of winter and summer. Then if you've got 4 or 5 of those.

When the intermediate supports are "bents" (a transverse pair of columns, with diagonal bracing) you don't need to worry, they just rock slightly with the expansion. But at the ends of the string of trusses, one end will be deemed "fixed" (typically the lower end, at concrete on grade), and the other end (maybe sitting on a steel beam in a building) will require a sliding base type connection.



Fixed:


Sliding:

 

I learned to take care of my dip-stick from a very young age!
I remember my old Dad advising me to "…whip it in, whip it out, wipe it off!"

 

Oh, your dip-stick seems to be bent! Which reminds me of a rhyme I learned as a kid:

"There once was a young man from Kent
Whose tool was peculiarly bent
…to save him some trouble, he put it in double…
…and instead of coming, he went!" (rim-shot!) (…groan!)

 

or this one...

There once was a man from Munich,
whose tool was as long as his tunic.
The girls their chops did lick,
at the site of his ****, {use another word for tool that rhymes with lick}
but, alas, he was a poor eunuch.

 

#18 scans awkwardly.