Oil change issues

Was that a socket, or tensioning band of some sort? Your best bet is a heavy gauge, 14 flute, very snug fitting socket. The nominal face-to-face of flutes is 64 mm, and sockets are very slightly over-sized.

There are some Toyota specific sockets that have an extended shoulder, with slots that fit over stiffeners on the Prius filter housing. I'm not sure how advantageous they are. I'm using a Honda filter socket, that is the same size, seems to be industry standard.

Also, you want to have a decent wrench. A ratcheting breaker bar, with ~18" handle makes life easy.

Reading between the lines, I get the sense this is the first time you've attempted to get this filter off? If so, it could be whoever was doing it in the past has overtorqued, and you'll be in for a fight the first time. An impact wrench might help, to "jitter" it loose. Official torque spec is 18 ft/lb.

A couple of visual aids:




And the oil change instruction from the Repair Manual is attached:

 

use a plumbers wrench then if that doesn't work unbolt the 3 bolts behind the oil filter assembly

 

The secret is not to rock it, but hit it, with a hammer, rubber mallet, just hit it. It'll pop loose. A longer torque extension would be helpful

 

Would taps from something like an electric torque wrench be good? I'm thinking so, gotta get one of those.

It's all due to Magilla Gorilla doing the last oil change I'll wager. Even if you're careful, do 18 foot pounds with a torque wrench, it takes SOME oomph at the next removal.

 

People don’t note this, and Toyota doesn’t note this in it’s instructions, but are you guys warming up the engine before the oil change? I did on both the Prius v and the new to me ‘14 iQ.

 

Definitely!

 

So I looked up thermal expansion rate of metal vs. plastic, and plastic is higher. So we are loosening it when it is tighter and tightening it when it is looser. Somehow I do not think the Toyota dealer service cares to warm up the engine before an oil change....

 

The iQ has a metal cap, and on it notes 25 + 5 Nm. Instructions note 40 Nm!

 

For some reason I have this 1" pipe in my repertoire. I don't know where it came from, but it "feels" like steel. It is just over 1 and a half ft. long. Does wonders for leverage/I mean my masculinity....

 

Similarly here:



The one issue with pipe extensions, they may overstress a regular ratchet wrench. I way over payed for the above sucker, at a local store. It's this one I think:

Jet Ratchet Wrenches | 1/2" DR Flex Head Ratchet Wrench Heavy Duty :: SureWerx