Removing Oil Filter Housing

[tricky1234]

Hi All, I have recently tried to replace the oil filter on my 05 Avensis and found the nut at the bottom of the housing seized on. I have tried to unscrew the complete filter housing but this is too tight and I am starting to damage the nut (aaahh!). Are there any special tools out there to help with extracting the complete housing? Also, I presumme once I have the housing removed (assuming I am successful) it is simply a case of removing the seized nut and replacing it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Mistermena]

Hi All, I have recently tried to replace the oil filter on my 05 Avensis and found the nut at the bottom of the housing seized on. I have tried to unscrew the complete filter housing but this is too tight and I am starting to damage the nut (aaahh!). Are there any special tools out there to help with extracting the complete housing? Also, I presumme once I have the housing removed (assuming I am successful) it is simply a case of removing the seized nut and replacing it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Richard. Welcome to TOC.

Yer there are tools that do this. If you take a look on eBay at Snap on tools you'll find a set that cost me £15 that has 4/5 double ended socket. One is used to take the nuts off and the other is used to "bite" into the nut to get it off. But once done a new one has to be bought(The nut). I'll try and find my set and tell you the part number as well as take a search on eBay... Just done a quick search onEbay, but can't see anything atm. But there are usually some lurking about...

Have you tried some WD40 or similar on it yet?

[pault38]

Hi All, I have recently tried to replace the oil filter on my 05 Avensis and found the nut at the bottom of the housing seized on. I have tried to unscrew the complete filter housing but this is too tight and I am starting to damage the nut (aaahh!). Are there any special tools out there to help with extracting the complete housing? Also, I presumme once I have the housing removed (assuming I am successful) it is simply a case of removing the seized nut and replacing it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

the filter is a little arkward, especially if you are doing it on your back with the car on axle stands as i did a couple of days ago. I suppose you could go to your local halfrauds and get a strap spanner and try that but in the end i just used a hammer and a brass drift hitting one of the lugs on the housing until it moved however its at quite a dodgy angle so you may not get the same result as me. i did try one of those oil filter spanners that is made of chain but had no luck with it.

[Druid Boy]

I have had exactly the same problem with my avensis - a bit disappointing considering it had been dealer serviced until I started doing it myself. I had to use a bolt extractor that bit into the head of the drain bolt. I thought that it would undo the drain bolt but it undid the whole housing after which I put the whole thing in a vice and removed the drain bolt. It took a bit of shifting I can tell you.

I then bought a Halfords adjustable filter tool but it was slightly too big. So, I chopped up an old bike inner tube and cable tied bits to the arms of the filter tool (making it smaller) and refiited everything to the specified torques rather than FT which I guess the 'professional' mechanics had been using.

Hey presto, job done. Well, not really 'hey presto' cos it took quite a while but it should be 'hey presto' next time.....

[tricky1234]

Thanks for your help everyone, seems that I'm not the only one....

[pault38]

at the end of the day its night and there is no real need to take the drain plug out just get the housing unscrewed, you are gonna drain it the moment you turn the housing upside down and empty the contents.

[Jas16]

it is quite an effort to loosen the housing. when I did the oil change a couple of weekends ago, I used the chain oil filter from Halfords, where one can either use the half inch drive or a 24mm (not exactly remember now) spanner. Not the best to grip, took a while and did slightly scratch the housing, but managed in the end