In preparation of the great event of the season I decided to change oil, filter and spark plugs. Easy enough I thought. Should not require a visit to the service garage. I can do this myself and save both time and money. I have done this many times before and I know how to do it. What could possibly go wrong…??

So I started by draining the old oil which was black and horrid. The red oil pan caught all of it and was almost full. The next thing was to remove the oil filter. Should be easy. Unfortunately it’s a tight fit and not that easy to get to but I had special socket that should fit perfectly. It did NOT.

Next up was to cut the perfect special socket so that it would fit. Well it did but I had to apply a lot of force to try to get the filter loose and then the socket would invariably slip off. So it was impossible for me to get the filter off with this approach.

At this point I started to suspect that it was most probably “Grunt Mac Ape” that had installed the oil filter and applied as much torque as possible – since it would not budge one bit despite all my efforts.

So I decided to use the low-tech, down-to-earth and ever so useful skills I picked up at Mr Redding’s motor shop in Pleasanton, California. Just smash a big sized screwdriver through the filter and use that to force the filter loose. It used to work just fine but the sheet metal used around the filter these days is about as thick as a soda can so instead it ripped… and the filter was still stuck.

Now I was running out of options and out of tools so I decided to ask Mr Kamasa which tools he had in store. The K135 Oil Filter Wrench looked perfect in the pictures on the internet but once it was delivered to me I realized that I had no tool that would fit the 3/8 drive connector… I had the 1/4 and the 1/2 but that did not help so back to the shop for more tools…