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Oil Filter Adapter

jasongreg28

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Aurora, Co
Alright guys I have a good one for you. One of my apparently not so bright freinds :greensmok tried to take his filter adapter housing off with a allen wrench....I think he messed up the torx head. He asked my help after the fact. Now we cant get the bolt out . Any ideas?
 
The only thing I can recommend is that you get the proper T-60 wrench in a form that allows you to get it as snugly into the head as you can, and then to wedge it tightly between head and body so that it can't cam out. You can hope that the allen wrench didn't get all the way into the outer points of the Torx star, and left enough there. When I did mine, I welded the body of the socket to a short flat wrench, and used a big flat prybar to jam it against the bolt head. A big cheater on the handle of the wrench, and it finally popped. Depending on the shapes of tools, this may be a two person job.

Make sure the socket of the bolt is well cleaned out with no burrs or junk in it, because it's pretty shallow at best. If you can really jam that wrench in there and keep it straight, you may still have a chance. Of course as soon as it begins to turn you'll have to unwedge it to allow it to come out, but if you get any movement at all you've won the battle, and the rest is just a matter of patience.

Unfortunately, the bolt is so hard, and there's so little protruding, that it's not possible to get vise grips or a pipe wrench on it. The wrench simply won't bite. One pretty drastic solution to this if the head is really mugged would be to saw, file or grind flats onto the little bit that does protrude, and see if you can get a big wrench on it (note, this is just an idea, never actually tried!). Beyond that I think you're getting into "pull-the-engine" territory. With the engine out, you could weld something to the bolt, or grind the entire flange off it and slip the adapter off, but of course this would also mean you'd have to find a new bolt.
 
Matthew Currie's right.

Push come to shove, I've often wondered if you couldn't use an air grinder or Dremel to grind the head off the bolt.
 
if you cant get anything else to bite in the torx head its screwed anyway and I would use a sawzall and cut thru the housing and bolt.
Whats left screwed into the block you should be able to screw out by hand.
A replacement housing and bolt from JY should be under $10.
 
I buggered one up a few months ago. I don't know if anyone has tried a pipe wrench since the outer 1/8" is part of the bolt. I never considered cutting the whole housing and replacing it, but that's definitely an option before pulling the engine(make sure you clean out the bits and pieces).
 
I buggered one up a few months ago. I don't know if anyone has tried a pipe wrench since the outer 1/8" is part of the bolt. I never considered cutting the whole housing and replacing it, but that's definitely an option before pulling the engine.
I couldn't get any pipe wrench to bite, because the bolt is so hard. It's also such a shallow protrusion that the flex in the jaws of most pipe wrenches is enough that when it starts to slip it just pops off sideways. It's possible that with the right wrench, the right technique, and maybe a fortuitous alignment of the planets, you could do it. I tried and failed. Ditto vise grips.
 
Take a Dremel and grind 2 flats on the round outer portion of the bolt. Try the pipe wrench/Vise Grips on the flats you made.
 
I would heat the bolt up before grinding anything off. Get it to where the head of the bolt is red, you should be able to loosen it a lot easier now that the metal has expanded
 
Has anyone gotten the bolt off without having any troubles? the bolt is perfectly fine on mine, just cant get it to break. I need ideas!!! Thanks and sorry for hyjacking thread.....
 
Has anyone gotten the bolt off without having any troubles? the bolt is perfectly fine on mine, just cant get it to break. I need ideas!!! Thanks and sorry for hyjacking thread.....

Ok, I will play!

Lets see, if you had a Renix XJ then the bolt would be easy--standard socket, probably wouldn't need anything more than a 3/8" long handled ratchet. So, that can't be what you are driving.

How about one of the mid-year XJs with a 14mm Allen bolt? Those can be hard to deal with. Maybe.

No, its probably the later model with the T60 torx bolt, right? Did you try about a 3 foot or longer cheater bar and one friend to help you pull on it?
 
LOL Joe!

early model HO (up to 94 i believe?) 14MM hex bit, taped in a half inch ring spanner wrench and the handle of my jack did the trick for me.

anything after that (im sure there are exceptions) Joe's dead on with the T60. did the same trick as above with my buddies 2000. T60 bit, 1/2" wrench and my jack handle. done in 10 minutes.

if you don't have a jack handle or any other kind of cheater bar, just snag another big wrench and carefully wedge/connect it to the other wrench and prepare for sore knuckles!
 
I found the real secret to the T-60 is to make sure that the socket is forced into the head in a way that doesn't let it pop out. The head is shallow, easily filled with oily crud, and the angle difficult. You need to make sure that when you put the torque to the wrench, you are not pulling crooked. It needs to be a careful 90 degrees from the axis, or it will cam out. I used a big pry bar to wedge the tool snugly between the bolt and the chassis. It still required a long handle and enough of a push to make me wonder if I was going to break something or tear the head off the bolt, but it worked.
 
first try using a punch and smacking the bolt right in the middle the vibration will help break it loose a little then try beating on the elbow so that your forcing the whole assembly counter clock wise after that the bolt may be loose
 
There is a locating nipple inside there, so you don't want to move the whole assembly much.
 
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