Well, here goes….I get home yesterday after work and find that sometime in the past few weeks (since I lowered it) that I have developed a pretty good oil leak. I have been noticing a “burnt” smell, but quite frankly thought it was my 285/30/20’s rubbing a bit in the rear and creating the smell.

I have oil all on the black cover plate pooling and it actually looks like it was leaking from the filter. I got the water hose out to clean up the mess and to see where it was leaking from and do believe the filter is leaking. I have not had an oil change in a few months, but noticed that the filter could be unscrewed by hand without much effort. I had an extra oil filter in my tool box (thanks Rob from Needswings) and decided to put it on to have a fresh set of o-rings. The old rings looked fine, but I changed them anyway. I tighten the filter the best I could by hand, but I did not have a strap wrench to tighten it down more. I cranked up the car and drove around the block and came back to see a little run of oil coming out of the filter again, so this must be the culprit. My question for you guys is how tight should the filter be? I bought a strap wrench on my way to the office and will “crank it down” when I get home but am not sure how tight. Your comments will be appreciated.

 

It has the spec on the cover, doesn't it. I recall I needed the belt tool to get mine off.
-steve

 

I had the same problem two weeks ago so I changed the filter and o-rings(I had just changed the filter and o-ring one month prior) and it seemed to stop the weepage. I tightened the the oil filter as tight as I can by hand and the use a strap wrench to tighten about 1/16 of an inch farther. Before I use to only tighten by hand. Hope this helps, Pat

 

25nm which equates to about 19ft lbs. It picked up the cap wrench from a MB dealer.

 

I only tighten mine by hand.....as tight as I can make it.

There have been many people who've overtightened the cap while using the strap wrench. Be careful you don't strip the plastic threads, or crack the cap........then I guarantee you'll have a leak.

Also....be absolutely sure you've put the O-rings in their proper spots, the biggest one closest to the cap is easy to put in the wrong place!

 

Just to make sure, where does the big o-ring go? I have it in the slightly larger space about 3 theads down from the cap. Is that correct?

 

Hey Fink...
I think weeping becomes seepage.
I could be wrong...

 

Like I have done in the past with other leaks of some sort, teflon tape always seems to work pretty good for me.

 

That sounds like a good idea but can it withstand the heat of the engine, if so I'll use it next time.

 

if you incur leakage again wipr the oil up with a rag. do not introduce water into the filter area. not good!! if oil can seep out water can be pushed in.

 

take a marker and mark a line from the filter cover and housing. Just tighten it back to the same spot and you will be good. You'll be surprised how hard it is with a strap to get back to that spot.

 

Haven't had any problems using it on oil drain plugs.

 

Just be sure that next time you change the filter you get all the tape off the threads......and ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DROP IT INTO THE ENGINE!!!!

 

My car has such a mark already from the factory. Does anyone else?

 

Man…what a pain. Well my initial findings were that it was leaking from the oil filter, I bought myself a nice rubber strap and just tightened it up a bit and seems to have solved that issue. I removed the black cover plate to clean it up and have oil slung all over the bottom of the engine/ car. It must have been leaking for some time as there is oil built up in all sorts of nooks and crannies!! I hosed the engine down the best I could, but still would but spent all weekend trying to get the remaining oil build up out so that it would not look like a leak as soon as the engine heats up and turns the oil that is now a solid back into a liquid….

I think I got 99% of the build up removed and do not see any leaking now…only time will tell I guess.

 

Standard automotive practice is to tighten threaded components by tighten them until they just strip out the threads and then em back off 1/2 turn. That will make you feel better but it is still stripped.

Better approach is to wipe off the threads and pre oil them and o rings before tightning. Its plastic dont go as tight as you can; cause that often means that it will break.

My Dakota has a similar cap and I loosely tighten it with a few fingers. To remove it I have to use really big channel locks to get it to even budge. I pre oil and it's still is tight.

With the C, I snug it up and that has always been good, I change every couple of months; recycle the oil to the mowers.
No leaks and I autocross frequently, high revs for a minute.

Woody

 

After I got mine to stop leaking I sprayed my engine down with a product called "Greased Lightning Blast" auto shop degreaser I think its like a citrus degreaser but you can't tell I ever had a leak. Good stuff.

 

so yea today i was driving behind this old car and smelled burned oil..i was like geez that truck is burnin hard..well when i got home i turned the car off and just looked at the edge of my front hood and saw smoke...of course i said WTF!! I opened the hood and sure enough i was burning oil on my engine and it was coming out of the oil filter..i almost could of went back to the mechs and just open a can of woop A**...so i bought a strap wrench and will work on it tomorrow..please let it not be a o ring pinch..

 

Just as an FYI….Spraying non diluted “Simple Green” will cut right through the oil that leaked out and has built up. I jacked my car up and sprayed underneath with a great result cleaning up the oil!!

 

Do not over-tighten these euro-style plastic filter caps. The O-ring does the sealing. We're talking around 15 ft-lbs max torque.

I overtightened my old VR6 filter cap once and the old age and oil eventually swelled the cap into the threads of the aluminum housing just to the point where it was impossible to rotate the filter cap without destroying the cap itself.

It took me three hours, basically sawing apart the old filter cap with a dremel, then splitting it along the threads. It was like brain surgery, trying to open the skull without touching the brain (or the aluminum threads in my case) It worked, but it taught me that these sorts of filters are a little dainty, so to speak.