Today was a day off from work, and days off from work
usually are days where I can attempt to work on one of my own projects. My
trusty Sidekick needed an oil change, and I had already picked up all the
needed supplies for such a change sometime earlier last week, so I was all set.
After a slow start to the morning, a coffee, and a couple donuts, I slipped
into my jumpsuit and got to work.
It was raining today, as Autumn has officially arrived in
Washington, so I pulled Suzi’s hood into the garage so that I could stay mostly
dry during the process. Draining the oil pan went smoothly. I didn’t spill a
drop on the garage floor and in no time the pan was empty, so I moved on to the
oil filter. The oil filter was quite the separate matter though. For some
reason, I’ve always had trouble getting oil filters off the cars I work on. But
Suzi’s always give me particular trouble. It doesn’t help, though, that the
filter is in this tiny little empty space which hasn’t enough room to fry a cat.
Thankfully, my dad has this oil-filter wrench which, in most cases, works
splendidly at loosening up particularly tough filters. But I have this problem
where I never really know which way to twist the darn thing. And after getting
elbow grease all over everything, I realized, much too late mind you, that I
had only succeeded in tightening the filter a couple quarter turns more, which
made it only a couple million times more impossible to get the filter to release
its hold. I yanked and I pulled, I pulled and I yanked. At some point yesterday
I jammed my thumb, and every time I lost my hold and bashed my thumb against
something hard It’d hurt like nothing else. I kept trying the loosen the thing
just growing angrier as my thumb grew more and more sore. Then I lost my temper
and punched my tires. I worked a sweat up and down, to the point where I had to
take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves. But that filter was on good and
tight and wasn’t about to let go.
As I sat and cursed at the ratty thing my brother sauntered
into the garage to check on me. I’d been out there for a couple hours at this
point and he was wondering what the hold up was. I’d changed the oil in my
Sidekick a multitude of times (I used to drive just under a hundred miles a day
and was doing oil changes at the end of just about every month.) and I had the
process down pat by now. I cursed at the filter a couple more times before
turning to him with a sour face and explaining what the trouble was. He
shrugged and asked if he could try. Of course he could! Sure, I usually like to
figure out my problems on my own, but when I’m having a lot of trouble with
something, sometimes it takes passing the buck to whoever’s unfortunate enough
to walk by at the time to make me feel a bit better.
So my brother gave the oil-filter wrench a try. No dice. I
handed him a big, ol’ pair of channel-locks. Nothin’. Then I pulled out a
biggest, baddest monkey-wrench I could find and he tried tightening that sucker
down on the oil filter. And even though he swore he saw the filter budge a bit
every couple tries, to me it only looked like we had succeeded in uglifying
that oil filter until it looked like it had been in the middle of two head-on
collisions, a T-bone crash, three side-swipes, and a rear-ending. It had dents
and scratches like nothing else. But since my brother was the one breaking the
sweat and not me, I rolled my sleeves back down and pulled my jacket on again.
Then I threatened that I’d spend the money I was going to use on his Christmas
gift on a new tool for getting this ridiculous oil filter off and he redoubled
his efforts. Just about all my morning and part of my afternoon had gotten sucked
into this usually simple task and I was getting desperate. But the filter still
didn’t want to budge.
Finally, I told him to give me another try at it, and I slid
under the car with the filter wrench. It first it seemed like things were going
to go as they had before, but then I felt the filter twist just a tiny bit. I
returned the wrench to starting point and tried again, this time putting a
little extra effort into it, and again I felt the filter budge just a bit. With
wild excitement, I wrenched on the filter a couple more times, rewarded by
several squeaks and much progress. With only a couple more turns I was able to unscrew
the awful filter with my hands and then it was off. I leapt up from under the car,
embracing my brother and shaking his hands in appreciation. Sure, I’d gotten
the filter off. But I was certain that he had loosened it up for me. He went
back inside to clean himself up while I installed the new filter and filled up
Suzi’s oil reserves. All that went as smoothly as usual, and my Sidekick was
ready to rumble.
Moral to the story? I guess think really hard about which way
the oil filter needs to turn before you try loosening it. And make sure you
have a sibling or a friend (Or, even better; both…) within close proximity to
pass your menial labor on to should you get aggravated.
