OK, so fairly standard job in the life of a motorcycle, but always in my experience has the same old problem. The Oil filter becomes stuck like you cant get it off.
So I basically made a mistake in reference to this problem here. When I reconstructed the oil line - I forgot that quite often there are no gaskets but compressable washers. In the case of the connection from the oil line to the sump, there is a copper allow ring, and in addition a rubber seal that sits inside the end of the hose - 7 and 12 on the diagram. Irritatingly of course, if you have to replace these because you are stupid enough to forget, you'll need to empty the oil out of the bike so you can fit again.
So naturally I decide that as the sump has to be drained, its obviously a good time to change the oil and filter. The filter that came with the bike - I bought it a few years ago is a Triumph one. I decided to go for a K&N one - this has a bolt moulded into the top of the thing - unlike the Triumph one which doesn’t. You get what you pay for. Anyway - this used to happen a lot with my ST3s. The crud from the road, cold, heat etc makes the damn thing weld to the sump. Even the proper tool is unable to remove them.
In lots of YouTube videos - the describe sticking a massive great screwdriver through the oil filter. I have gone for a more low impact method. It seems to me if you stick a chunking great screw driver through the filter, you could damage the threads - and believe me when I say that can do a lot of damage. On one of my ST3s I managed to damage the sump - which is alloy, not steel, with a hairline crack. Luckily I managed to find a metalwork place to repair it. So Im assuming the Bonnie is the same. I new sump is XXXcash. And repair was not easy to do.
Initially I did try to remove the filter with a band tool - but the room on a motorbike is very limited, I think it is on a lot of cars to be honest. The band tool can also easily damage the motorbike. There is a switch just to the left side of the filter which you can knock and damage etc,
My method is to buy a tool, as shown below. But Ive modified it by drilling a hole through the cup. With this you can then drill a screw through, which easily punctures the oil filter as they are quite weak. You bang the cup / tool full into place with a rubber mallet. Stick in the screw and drill in. Hey presto - the thing will turn. In my opinion a sudden force is better than slowly winding on. And eventually the thing comes off.
Cost of tool - £15 on eBay.
