Well, I'm not much of a mechanic but I'm learning a lot with this car, so here's a question for all of you. Is it very common for the seal immediately below the oil filter to blow out? What could have caused this?

I just took the car in for it's "15k" service...it had just hit 16k.

Four days later I'm driving to work and hear a whir that kindof sounds like metal on metal, so I drop rpms to listen closer and shortly thereafter I'm in the parkinglot at work (maybe 30 seconds). Right as I park the oil light pops on and I immediately shut the engine off, pop the hood, and there is oil everywhere.

Well I digress, as you can guess there was much cussing and I've very depressed about this. I always service the dealership so they can't dish it off as someone else's fault... I'm just curious as to what could have happened.

 

I assume you are talking about the seal that is attached to the filter itself. I've never had one fail. Are you sure it "blew out"? Since you'd just had the car serviced it seems more likely that the oil filter just wasn't tightened properly.

 

I think we're talking about the same thing, "blow out" was just the best way I know to describe it. The seal looks like it fits properly everywhere but one spot, in that spot there's about a half a size of a quarter sticking out from the groove. At least that's the only thing that I could see and it's what the tech thought was where the problem was. I think your right about the filter not being tightened properly. I'm also hoping it didn't cause damage to the engine, I love my RX8 and wouldn't trade it for the world.

 

I think that the most common cause of this is not lubricating the rubber seal with a bit of oil before tightening the filter down. Friction causes the rubber seal to bunch up in one spot and you get a leak.

A less common reason is that the old rubber seal stayed on the mount rather than the old filter. Two rubber seals seem to cancel each other out.

If you shut off the engine as soon as the oil light came on then you shouldn't have any damage.

 

Thats your problem.