I decided to change the oil and filter yesterday - rather that waiting for our maintenance day next week... minimising the crap that I'd need to take.
So,...
Oil - check
Filter - check
Torque wrench - check
Maintenance manual - check
Ready to go... oh - wait, I'll need something to take the filter off (put there by the "Bike Doctor"). Off to my local Malz and I buy one of those windy-strappy things from Supercheap ($18) that tighten around the canister as you wind it up. Given the limited space under the ST I thought this more appropriate.
Now I'm ready.
Right. I figured the first thing to do would be to loosen the filter (not remove it) before I warmed the bike and drained the oil. Well, that bloody windy-strappy thing didn't last....
Bugger. I then realised that the can of the filter had deformed quite badly - it was strangled. I'm not aware of the internal composition of the filter and therefore, wasn't sure if the bike was still rideable.... I wasn't intended to find out.
So, off to the local shops again... luckily there's an AutoOne, Repco, Supercheap, and Malz all within about 200m of each other (South Central Jandakot)... they all had different cam-based wrenches, but only Malz had one small enough ($20). As I was walking into Malz I had vision of needing to punch a screwdriver through the filter... luckily I didn't need to:
Using a socket, as you unscrew, the jaws tighten. I did struggle a bit with the space and had to keep loosening and repositioning it... at one point a jaw was jammed a little between the top of the filter and engine. Eventually I got the filter off:
While you can just see the teethmarks left behind by the cam-wrench, you can easily see the deformed can caused by the strap.
In the end I'm damn glad I did this at home and not at the maintenance day.... having several shops to choose from in close proximity made it a little less-stressful.