The Harbor Freight Tool That Makes It Easy To Remove An Oil Filter

It's vitally important that you change your car's oil filter on a regular basis. If you never change your oil filter at all, the entire thing could end up petrified, with solidified oil and grime fusing it to your vehicle in a rock-like state that's difficult to break. Of course, as with anything else that's important to tend to regularly, life rarely makes doing so easy. Oil filters may be located in cramped crannies near the car's engine block that you can't reach with either your hands or a tool. Even if you can, they may be naturally slick and thus hard to get a grip on.

If you've got a stuck oil filter that's either too boxed in to reach or too slippery to hold, Harbor Freight has a couple of tools on offer that might be able to help you. Specifically, it offers two different locking chain clamps from its in-house brands Bremen and Pittsburgh. These simple devices consist of a sturdy metal chain and a handheld locking jaw, which you can use to set the chain's size and lock it in place. Think of it like a wrench whose size you can freely manipulate to reach into those tight spots and hold fast to even the most slippery oil filters.

The Bremen and Pittsburgh locking chain clamps are largely the same in design and function, with the only major difference between them being that the former is 20 inches and the latter is 19 inches. Beyond that, the general idea and purpose of the tools are identical.

The locking chain clamp is made up of a steel grip and a long chain. The chain is attached to one end of the grip and can be fed into the other end by squeezing the locking mechanism. When you release the grip, the chain will be held in place. You can use the locked chain as a sturdy hold on pretty much any object up to around 6 inches in diameter, even if it's oddly shaped or slippery.

To use one of these tools on an oil filter, either wrap the chain around the filter and feed it back into the grip, or just size the chain for the filter and hook it around it. Either way, once that chain has a hold, it will stick fast as you pull the grip and turn it, loosening and removing the filter. Once it's unstuck, you should be able to just pull the filter out by hand. You can also use the locking chain clamp to tighten the new oil filter.