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I am working on fixing up an old Scotts orange John Deere lawn tractor. I've cleaned up most of it and fixed the broken hood. Now I am on to mechanical maintenance, changing the oil. But, when I try to remove the oil cap, the oil tube unscrews. That is going to send oil all over the mowing deck and chassis. The tube unscrews when I try to hold it as hard as I can with channel locks.

What am I doing wrong, or what is the best way to get that cap/nut off? Here is a picture to make sure I am describing this correctly:

Been there done that, easy fix. Clamp a Vise-Grip pliers on the pipe as tight as you can. If you have an impact wrench give it a couple of quick shots, should come loose. No impact, breaker bar with a socket and steady pressure normally will do the job. When I reinstall the cap, I always use a bit of thread tape, which makes it very easy the next time.

Thank you. I do have an impact. I will try using the vice grips. The tape idea - I am assuming Teflon - sounds like a great idea.

Rivets said:

Been there done that, easy fix. Clamp a Vise-Grip pliers on the pipe as tight as you can. If you have an impact wrench give it a couple of quick shots, should come loose. No impact, breaker bar with a socket and steady pressure normally will do the job. When I reinstall the cap, I always use a bit of thread tape, which makes it very easy the next time.

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I just use plumbers pipe tape, white not yellow.

Another thing you can do is get one of those siphon-type oil changers. The only quirk about them is you need to learn how much of the oil can be taken out with them. It varies from engine to engine.

To find out, start with the oil level at the full mark, then use the siphon tool to take out as much as you can. Then measure the amount of oil that came out. If you're lucky, all of it did. If only 75% came out, reduce your oil change interval by 25%. If 2/3rds came out, reduce OCI by 1/3rd. For most non-commercial users, even with the reduced OCI, once a year will cover it.