I go to check the oil yesterday and the oil dipstick plastic knob/cap won't budge. I have checked the oil once a week for 17 years so I have taken off and put back on this same cap hundreds of times and never had this problem. It wasn't cross-threaded, just wouldn't move. I grabbed a rag, still nothing. Then I put on gloves. Nothing. I got out a huge pair of pliers and even then the thing would not move even a little. I could not believe it. Over the course of about 30 minutes, I ended up pretty much emptying the whole toolbox, and piece by piece the plastic cap broke apart but the thing inside the tube was still stuck in place. I had to get a flat head screwdriver and a hammer and wedge the screwdriver between this piece and the metal tube and repeat that all around the plastic in the center until I finally could pry it out. By this time, both my hands were all bruised and sliced-up and bleeding, and there were a million pieces of tiny black broken fragments of the knob everywhere. I have to assume that a bunch of tiny black crap fell down into the tube. Now I have no dipstick.

Has anyone ever had anything like this happen?

Haha, craziness. I have not experienced this but did you remove that tube and replace it with another tube yet? I doubt you'll be able to recover those broken fragments of plastic from inside of there, so it would be easiest to remove the tube.

-Infamous Ob