Innovative motor oil container kills spills

May 9, 2012 - PRLog -- Getting the oil from the plastic bottle into your car's engine without spilling down the engine block requires quick hands and a bit of luck. This innovative container design eliminates the risk while costing about the same as a standard plastic motor oil container.

"You don't need a funnel or other gadget here - we use a slightly modified motor oil container design that should fit within the cost realm of a standard container", says Dan Vorhis, one of the inventors of the new bottle design.

"It works like this: Instead of taking the bottle cap off and turning the container over to dispense, you turn the container over with lid still on. Then, instead of unscrewing the cap, you twist it on more tightly. The top of the cap pops open." said Vorhis.

"This eliminates that ridiculous split-second when you try to turn a lidless bottle of oil over without spilling - maybe you hit the valve cover opening, maybe you don't. Or use a funnel and now you have 2 oily things to deal with. It makes sense to solve the dispensing problem with the bottle design itself, no gadgets required. If you can do it without adding cost"

According to Vorhis, this container is of similar size and shape to a standard motor oil container, so cost of plastics, cartons and shipping should be comparable. The design is patent pending, and Vorhis and his partner are looking for interested buyers.

"We design products and offer them for sale. This particular design might be of interest to a packaging company, a blow molder, maybe a motor oil company, many of whom contract with blow molders right on site."

Given the number of motor oil containers sold - some say over 3 billion annually in this country alone - an improvement in design might attract some interest.