My dad tried that with his 82 Corvette years back...his brother had used a filter wrench to tighten it. My dad tried to loosen it by jamming a screwdriver through the nice thin tin that makes up the housing. Only THEN did he decide to ask me to look at it....Took a spanner I had that fit in the holes to get it undone, plus a whole lot of cussin.

 

I have always just spun them on by hand till they stopped really loosely. Then hand turned it tight about 1/2-3/4 of a turn.

 

Me too. By hand ,works well when removing also.

 

and that's the instructions on most filter boxes tell you to. somebody needs to put a box with instructions on someone's desk at chrylser

 

My first filter change was near an hour, lots of bleeding and cussing and the filter was in 3 pieces when I finally got all of it off the engine. Band type filter wrench collapsed the filter without turning it, screwdriver method just poked lots of holes, ripped at it a while with channel locks and finally got the mating surface off with filter pliers that I went out to get in the wife's car when she came home. Since then it's been no trouble.