Hardest Danged Oil Change EVER!

[NobleRogue]

Wow!! My son and I have finally gotten around to doing the carbon cleaning done. We Seafoamed the fuel. then I ran half a can of Seafoam through the intake. After that we pored the other half in to the oil fill spot in the valve cover. Ran it for 5 miles then we changed the oil after letting the engine cool off a little. That oil filter was the hardest danged thing to get out. It took the both of us working together to get the wrench in place then turned just enough to get the filter out by hand. I used to work for Good Year doing oil changes back in "2000". I never had such a hard time removing an oil filter. I blistered my thumb then removed the flesh from it in the process. A bloody mess it was. But we got it done. In the future I will pay someone else to loose the flesh off of their thumb.

[Demon I Am]

You need an oil filter socket, and adjustable angle head ratchet. It also helps a lot of you remove the support brace from the intake manifold... Tons more room

[— kung fu jesus —]

^ yes.

You can also massage things out of the way to reach the filter from above. I did this on my 1.6 and the whole process from wheels up to wheels down is 20 minutes.

You can also use a filter for a V6 Probe GT or V6 MX6, which is the same filter, but longer.

[NobleRogue]

Thank you for the help guys. But I think i'm still going to be taking it to jiffy lube in the future. I'll still be changing the oil on my wife's Camry, My motorcycle and my daughters Fiat here at the house. I just posted this cause I felt like venting my frustration over loosing that flesh off of my thumb. I guess you can now say that I have truly pored my Blood, Sweat and Tears in to this build. Thank you guys for being my digital punching bags.... or sounding boards if you prefer.

[wannafbody]

Buy a Royal Purple or Amsoil filter and change it every 3 or so years

[theothersawyer]

I've never had any major issues removing the filter! Sometimes it's a pain to get to, but not bad enough to have someone else do the oil change for me!

[— Agent☣Orange —]

Sounds like a bad first experience but don't let it deter you. I always managed fine by reaching down from above and unscrewing the filter by hand and that is because I was the one who did it before. My first time was like yours though. Somebody stuck that filter on with 300 ft. lbs. of torque requiring me to go buy a filter socket. Same with the drain bolt. It's just a drain, no need to treat it like a head bolt.

[Cxmoney]

remove that stupid intake brace. that is the thing that really made me mad and made my oil changes take forever. once I read that Flyin Miata removed theirs on their cars and they had no issues with them for the thousands of miles they drove, I removed mine and threw it away. makes oil changing so much easier. I have no problem changing my oil anymore.

[— Agent☣Orange —]

I don't know if I'd take that advice from a Marine. Lock a Marine in a room with a bowling ball and it becomes either missing, stolen or broken. Now imagine a Marine working on your Miata....

[Satisaii]

1981 IH Scout Turbo Diesel. Holds 11 quarts of the nasty, black oil. For some awesome reason they decided to mount a canister filter upside down and only accessible from underneath. It also was positioned to dump it's entire 1 qt capacity directly on the front pumpkin. No way to catch it or stop it. The only time I did it, I came out covered in that crap. Oil in the hair and face covered. Had to throw away the clothes I was wearing. Washed my hair with Tide and dish washing soap. Yeah, never did that again.

I would see the guy at Jiffy Lube come out of the pit in that exact same state every time I took it in. Always made sure to give him a tip since his day was done at that point.

[Greasemonkey2000]

First oil change i did i installed this to prevent this sort of issue:

[wannafbody]

On my LS1, the filter is so tight to the oil pan that I can't get filter wrenches to work and cap style wrenches won't fit so I pretty much resorted to using K&N filters with the nut for easy removal.

[NobleRogue]

1981 IH Scout Turbo Diesel. Holds 11 quarts of the nasty, black oil. For some awesome reason they decided to mount a canister filter upside down and only accessible from underneath. It also was positioned to dump it's entire 1 qt capacity directly on the front pumpkin. No way to catch it or stop it. The only time I did it, I came out covered in that crap. Oil in the hair and face covered. Had to throw away the clothes I was wearing. Washed my hair with Tide and dish washing soap. Yeah, never did that again.

I would see the guy at Jiffy Lube come out of the pit in that exact same state every time I took it in. Always made sure to give him a tip since his day was done at that point.

Thats just funny. I don't care who you are.

[NobleRogue]

First oil change i did i installed this to prevent this sort of issue:

I like that.

[Circuit Dreaming]

1: remove the intake manifold brace.
2: when installing a filter, just screw it on as tight as you can with your bare hand (I have NEVER had a drop leak from this).
3: Buy the longer MX6 GT filter.
4: put on some rubber gloves to fairly easily remove the filter by hand.