Hugh, when you lightly oil the seal do you take it out and do both sides as well as inside/outside faces or just the engine side (as most people do). If you only do the engine side it is possible that the surface that sits against the filter is catching and slightly rolling the mating face whilst it gets tightened, the seal needs to be able to slide a bit against all the metal faces. It is a similar principle when lightly oiling threads when torqueing them up acurately to prevent grabbing.
Denzil, yes I take the seal out and "lube" all four sides as I thought that as you say the seal can grip against the body of the filter and get distorted causing less than full contact on the sealing face. Thankfully both the filters I re-did yesterday have sealed up fine and after running up on the stand and then thirty plus miles on thye road are totally dry so fingers crossed Ireland will be trouble free on that score at least and I'll have no more oil leaks over the living room floor from the other one.
Wouldnt recommend doing BOTH seal sides? Didnt even know they came off to be honest? If lubed both sides the thing will twist, slide & squit around under tightening, probably explains all the leaking??
The seal just pulls out of the housing and I understand what you're saying but I have had less trouble since trying this than when I only greased/oiled the top face. The important thing to me at the moment is that everything is now ok having checked the threaded spigot for tightness and re-fitted the filters to a tighter degree than previously. As said, everyones ideas and suggestions have been appreciated and hopefully they will be of use to anyone else with a similar problem.
this is disturbing Hugh as I know you take the most trouble, I hope you come up with a reason and let us know.
Had a look at oil filter tools today and going to get the "socket" type so I got out a spare filter to measure up ,count the flats etc and noticed for the first time that apart from the part no. there is also a brief instruction printed on the side. "OIL THE GASKET AND TIGHTEN WITH KEY AT 11Nm." I would think that this is considerably tighter than the 1/8 to 1/4 turn that most of us talk about giving when fitting. So it looks like it is simply a case of tightening to a greater degree than previously, this goes against everything I was ever taught and isn't in line with what I've always seen discussed on this and other forums but hey live and learn.
I'm sure you will find that it is considerally more than the 1/4 turn more like 3/4 -1 turn more, I once put mine on at hand tight then a bout a 1/4 more and it rattled loose again in no time ,I got a corse filter cup from america off ebay,if you look in the haynes manual i think it says to torque to 19Nm but i feel this is a little too much and could cause problems when taking back off or damage the filter in the first place,is it OEM ducati filters that you use I think they say 11Nm on them aswell,your local dealer might sell the propper filter cup :smile:
Yes Kev, oem filters which say 11Nm so from now on that's what I'll be doing. Got to go now, leaving for Ireland around 11.00 and still loads to do. Thanks to everyone for all the input.
When you get back look at face of filter. I had to buy one in emergency as made hole in monster one. Got it from Halfords, face was bent so not round, no way that would seal anything.
