The Mityvac 7201 fluid evacuator requires no power to create a vacuum and pressure to evacuate and disperse most automotive liquids and chemicals. The Mityvac contains a piece of plastic tube that you insert into the dipstick of your car to operate. However the plastic tube can break and a good size of the tube can be stuck in the bottom of the dipstick where the oilpan sits.

This is exactly what happened to me. While using the device to extract motor oil, a 5" inch piece of tubing broke off and sat at the bottom of the oil pan in my 2002 Mazda Miata. The piece of plastic can not sit in the oil pan as it can ruin the engine (confirmed by MityVac) and it resulted in $1300 of service work $600 of which was directly due to removing engine parts to remove the piece of tubing.

While contacting Lincoln Industrial company, their technical acknowledged over the phone that there is a limited amount of reports of this problem and they did not feel like there is enough to issue a safety notices. They have no responded to the matter.

There are multiple reports on the internet and specifically on miata.net ( the forum thread listed below).

http://forum. miata.net/vb/showthread.php?p=3559748#post3559748

Again, warnings were not issued due to the low amount of problems being reported. I argue that this is completely unacceptable as the ramification is extremely costly and inconvenient. This tool was supposed to help and simplify the process, however at this point it not only did not simplify but amplified a trivial task to a very costly and timely proposition (a tow to the shop and labor to remove the oil pan to find the broken tube estimated around 800 5-6 hours of labor)

Their manual is also poorly written, page 3 only indicates reaching the bottom of the dipstick but what constitute reaching the bottom? The tech also said, "you need to stop when you feel resistance because that's the bottom". I said "my dipstick is curved, I felt resistance when I pushed it in to begin with"

http://www.mityvac.com/user_manuals/07201.pdf

The manual, customer service and product design all needs improvement. I failed to receive a proper response after a phone call and multiple emails. Please investigate and prevent this from happen to other people.