This can help prevent you from over-tightening the oil filter-and your drain bolt too. Its short handle mitigates some of the mechanical lever advantage you’d have with a longer ratchet. Check out the pic below for another handy tip: ProTip: When working with oil filter sockets, use a stubby ratchet. While all engines differ, a good role of thumb is get the filter hand tight, follow up with a quarter turn of the wrench, then back it off slightly. And this tendency can be exacerbated when using something like an oil filter socket. Regardless of the tools they use, gearheads have a tendency to over-tighten oil filters, making them really difficult to get off 3,000 miles later. While an oil filter socket makes it easier to spin an oil filter off, be extra, extra careful when using it to spin the new filter on. (Image/OnAllCylinders – Paul Sakalas) A Warning When Tightening an Oil Filter with a Socket This oil filter socket makes it a far quicker job. Using an ordinary oil filter wrench would mean 1/10th of a turn at a time. The oil filter on this four-cylinder FWD car is squished between the inner fender, front wheel, and CV axle. While putting an oil filter wrench on here may be do-able, you could save a ton of headaches with an oil filter socket. Oil filter socket to the rescue! (Image/OnAllCylidners – Paul Sakalas)įinally, a lot of modern front-wheel drive cars with transverse-mounted engines have the oil filter on the side of the motor, which means it might be squeezed between the inner fender and the axle half-shafts (one way) or the alternator or A/C compressor (the other way). You’re supposed to change the oil while the engine is warm, but snaking your hand between blazing-hot header tubes is a bad idea. Again, an oil filter socket is downright essential here. Speaking of exhaust components, if you’ve got a motorcycle with an inline engine, there’s a good chance the oil filter is tucked right behind the engine’s header tubes. An oil filter socket saves the day-and your wrist. A tight fit for sure, but don’t forget, those heat shields can get really, really, really hot too. It’s snug inside the donut hole of an exhaust manifold. Here’s the oil filter location on a late model Subaru Boxer engine. (That makes oil filter sockets quite handy when you’re dealing with an over-tightened oil filter, too.)Īnd as alluded to earlier, it’s downright essential in tight places, particularly those oil filters nestled in between, behind, or underneath exhaust components. Better yet, it won’t slip like a strap wrench could-you get a nice, secure grip on the head of the oil filter. (Image/OnAllCylinders – Paul Sakalas) How an Oil Filter Socket Makes Your Life Easierįor starters, an oil filter socket won’t pinch and crumple the relatively thin sides of the oil filter canister like a wrench will, mitigating the risk of damaging the filter to the point that it cannot be easily removed. An oil filter socket sits on top of the oil filter canister, giving you a solid, secure way to spin the filter on and off. The socket typically has a regular 3/8-inch drive female coupling on top, then you simply insert your ratchet and get to work. So…how do ya get the dang filter off? Enter our friend, the oil filter socket.Īnd that’s exactly what it is: A big honkin’ socket that goes around the top of the oil filter so you can twist it off like you would a standard nut. That also means these oil filters are often found in very, very tight spots, which makes it impossible to get a standard oil filter wrench in there. On certain vehicles, simply changing the oil filter often requires you to pull back aero panels, turn the wheels, drain the wiper fluid, drop the gas tank, remove the axles, tune the radio, roll down the windows, recite an incantation, clap really loud…you get the idea. Mechanics like to joke about their disdain for vehicle engineers, particularly those that put regular service items in hard-to-reach locations-making routine vehicle maintenance a real pain.Īnd perhaps nowhere is this disdain more acute than with oil filter placement. And don’t be surprised if you start accumulating new ones for every vehicle you own. Oil filter sockets come in a range of sizes and styles, so you’ll have to determine which size filter your engine uses first.
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