I recently noticed oil seeping down the side of my oil filter and sure enough someone (me) musta tightened the cap a little too hard. I backed the cap off and turned it till it made contact with the o-ring then tightened it till I could see the o-ring "just" starting to bulge out.
So far so good.

 

O-rings are never used in situations where they 'bulge'. O-rings are made to fit in grooves or in chamfers.
The filter cap screws flush with the housing, if you can see an O-ring then it is not fitted correctly or it is too large. There would be a washer instead of an O-ring if the type of fitting you describe was intended.
In our case the O-ring is slightly deformed, not crushed.
I have never seen the filter assembly yet as my oil changes are done at the dealer under the extended warranty, I am going from the photos and standard practice.

 

Go to the auto parts store and pick up a oil filter wrench, the one that matches the cap. They are cheap. It has a socket 1/4" or 3/8" fitting for your ratchet and you can use a torque wrench to tighten it to spec... I use one, but dont use my torque wrench.. just snug it down to line up the marks that were on the cap and engine...

 

Interesting - I'll have to take a look for that filter wrench next time I'm in a parts store.

As far as lining up the marks, I had read that in another thread (search is my friend...LOL), but when I changed my filter, I couldn't see any marks to line up. I'll have to take another look for those as well.

Some good information in this thread that I did not see in others, so hopefully this will help others in the future.

Jon

 

well, here's the rub, and 180 is right on. Amercan vs European. We are all used to flat rubber seals when we did our oil changes, and these are O rings. Follow 180's advise...we can tightened down a little harder on a flat rubber gasket and get away with it, even though we all know to hand tighten a regular oil filter found on US produced cars. I use a filter wrench to remove mine, but hand tighten when re-installing, the same way I did regular US oil changes...never use a wrench when re-installing. For those first timer, just pull out the old filter assembly set it aside on a towel, or clean rag, lay out your o rings, pull the filter off, note o ring positions, remove the old install the new.

 

tighed1, your comment about "I backed the cap off and turned it till it made contact with the o-ring then tightened it till I could see the o-ring "just" starting to bulge out" doesn't make sese to me. I do not think that largest o ring should be visible at all. That O ring should be below the top lip of that cap in the 'second' opening (first opening being between the top lip and the first ring), and that cap is semi-flush with the housing it screws into. Putting some new oil on that top O ring made it much easier to slip past the housing to seat where it belongs. The O ring wasn't visible when I took it out on my first oil change, and the new one went in below that aluminum housing when I was finished installing the filter into that housing. If I'm not remembering the assembly as I should be, then I apologise, but I stand by the fact that large O ring isn't visible when its fully assembled, it should be below the aluminum housing lip when installed properly.

 

Bringing this back to the top asking tighted1 if I misunderstood his post about that 'O' ring bulge.

If that filter housing/filter isn't seated properly, could some portion of the filtering system be bypassing the nominal flow pattern/rate? Just a thought/concern.

I did review the job I did on mine, that lip on the cap (on the 08's) do sit over that top housing case. The lip of the cap should be snug on the aluminum case housing. There should be no portion of the 'O' ring visible, or 'bulging' out. If the other 4 years (07 down to 04) are built the same then anyone who has an 'O' ring bulging out at the top does not have that 'O' ring in the right position, nor is the cap properly seated in the housing.