Fear the Crab

Changed the oil in my truck today. What normally would have taken less than half an hour turned into a four hour ordeal. First, what I thought was the oil drain plug turned out to be the drain plug for the automatic transmission fluid. I had to go to Toyota to get some more atf, because none of the nearby auto parts stores carried my particular type. While there, I also got an oil filter wrench because the one we had at home was too big.

When I returned home, I refilled the atf to an acceptable level, and drained the correct engine oil. Then I tried to take off the filter. Unfortunately, the filter was on so tightly that no matter what wrench or how much force we used, it wouldn’t come off. Each time I tried to apply some force, I would see my truck move and not the filter. At first I was thinking that perhaps the screw was reversed, but that way didn’t help either. So I figured that perhaps if I didn’t get this filter off, I’d just go in to work and try again later. However, as luck would have it, all that force eventually broke the filter so that now I HAD to replace it.

We finally had to drive a screwdriver into the filter with a hammer and remove it that way. We got to this approach practically 3 hours after pulling and twisting and much cursing. So that came off, I was able to replace the filter and the oil, and now I’m all set.

Some of my co-workers say that the filter was on so tightly because it was factory-installed by some machine instead of a sane person. I just hope the next time I change my oil it won’t be as bad.