[wildrage]

I used a filter wrench leveraged against the transmission housing and opened it with the socket wrench.

I found out that my housing wasn't OEM - that's where all the confusion came from on my part. I finally realized my problem when the catera filter I bought didn't fit my housing, and becasue my housing cap was aluminum and not plastic. When I finally got the housing off it had some sort of German brand name on it.

If I had a housing to replace it with, I would have, but I wanted to put my car back together and not wait a week for the part to come in. I bought a standard oil filter and used the gasket off of that for the housing to block- it fit perfectly. The old housing to block gasket was almost flush with the housing and very brittle. It was what was causing my oil leak.

When I do my next oil change I'll be replacing the entire housing with a GM OEM one. Does anyone have the part number for it? No dealer has the whole housing listed on their online stock - only the cap.