How do you remove end caps off canister filters?

[350Rocket]

How do you guys do it? My first time, just got a decent filter cutter off Amazon and it got the canister off no problem. I did search and assumed this had come up before, but either the search isn't working well for me or it hasn't.

I'm kind of rushing as I'm taking my wife on our wedding anniversary tomorrow. Extremely hot weather has me wanting to take my truck for the better air conditioning, as opposed to my 40 year old Oldsmobile which has working but mediocre AC. Truck has a lot of slop in the steering which is getting fixed next Friday but also an internal coolant leak which I posted about recently.

Just wanting to see how much sludge is building up in the filters after I disturbed it.

Attached proof that I searched but open to people who are better with the fussy search engine on here than I am.

 

[jhellwig]

Google. Lots of videos out there. Or read the instructions for the cutter.

 

[FowVay]

I cut the canister with a filter cutter and then I cut the filter media away from the end caps with a razor knife. I will warn you to use extreme caution because you can lose a finger very quickly if you're not careful.

 

[350Rocket]

Google. Lots of videos out there. Or read the instructions for the cutter.

Why waste your time posting nothing?

 

[350Rocket]

I cut the canister with a filter cutter and then I cut the filter media away from the end caps with a razor knife. I will warn you to use extreme caution because you can lose a finger very quickly if you're not careful.

Thanks. Figured I could just cut through but it will leave a bunch of chunks of filter media and might make it hard to discern actual debris vs damage I did. Thought maybe there was some obvious way I could remove them without contamination.

The filter cutter obviously just gets the canister off and not going to help with getting into the media itself. They are glued on very strongly and not coming off by prying. Already did some damage trying to use the vice.

Then used the forum search and figured if it wasn't on here it's probably not easily found on Google either.