Car Bits - The Oil Filter Menace
By Rob On 7th June 2008
Time to start 'doing bits on the car'. Grandpa Brown, with fifty years
experience in the motor mechanics business, lent us a hand in doing some
maintenance essentials. The spark plugs were a little black, showing
signs of a rich mixture. So the carb was fiddled with, and the tick
over note and exhaust now sound much, much better. Next up was the fuel
filter, a tricky little thing. Getting out the old one - fine, getting
in the new one in required three pairs of hands, a dismantled gear
linkage system, and a lot of force.
Then, the oil filter and oil change. The filter is pretty small, and in a very awkward position. There was no turning it, so we tried the 'drive a screw driver through it and use it as a lever' trick. No luck. We tried a different angle, another hole, two screwdrivers. Nothing. We invested in a special chain grippy tool from Halfords. That didn't work wither. Eventually, Grandpa Brown defeated the thing with a screwdriver/hammer/chiselling action that took forever. We also had issues with the cap on the block (it disintegrated when we used too much force to open it, before we realised it was a 'twist-and-lift' rather than a 'screw it' number), and the sump plug (we didn't reinstall a washer, and it leaked all over Rich's driveway). The Car 1, the Lads 0.