If you can tq it 7/8 turn by hand, go for it. I am no power lifter, but am no slouch either and cant tighten it 7/8 turn by hand without feeling like I am ripping my hands off. Granted, I have hurt my wrists and hands too many times in the past between building things, skateboarding and snowboarding, so maybe thats part of it. In the end, as long as you get it to where the marks say, it doesnt matter how you do it (a leather belt actually works better as a strap wrench than a strap wrench does for this ).

And, I am sure that some of the guys watching their cars burn, or hearing the motor have a scrap iron ...er aluminum fit probably heard themselves previously saying "you dont need to tq the oil filter, thats overkill!!"

 

Ok, now you guys have me a little bit paranoid. Wish I had seen this thread before I did my first oil change this past weekend. I used a Purolator PureONE PL14459 with the textured grip control. I tightened it by hand till it felt like my wrist would break. About 3 quarters of a full turn. Should I replace it with the Honda filter or let it go till the next oil change.

 

You could put a screw metal clamp around it and wire it to prevent it from rotating, leaking, spraying your engine with oil. This would also keep your bearings overheating, destroying themselves, the hot oil igniting and having you pull over to deal with the inferno destroying your car on a lonely 2 lane road with your favorite female in the pax seat as the car of Albanian ax murderers and rapists close in on you as you discover you are out of out of cell phone range and you left your CCW gear at home.

Then you could change it to OEM at 3K miles. Or to be sure, do a fast change of filters and top it off the oil.

 

Facts:

-Cosmomiller is correct (noteably about the metal to metal contact, and how this differs from other filters)

-if you tighten a PCX oil filter by hand, and you run the car hard, you stand a VERY good chance of having it back off, resulting in instant engine fire and a blown engine.

-it is impossible to split the PCX filter seal by wrench tightening or over tightening. Cosmos post explains why.

-if you need to keep retorquing the filter than you are not tightening properly.

 

Bottom line...PCX has to be tightened with a wrench. Take this warning to the bank.

If you have a PCX hand tight and you have been fine, you have also been lucky or don't drive hard.

 

Well I guess you learn something every day. I've been very lucky over the last eleven years to not have had the catastrophic filter failure by not torquing my filters on. I don't track my car, but I don't baby it either. Now I understand. I have a pretty good grip, but not that good. I'll torque that OEM filter on from now on. In fact I'm on my way out to the garage right now to see to this. Man if I hadn't been reading these forums I wouldn't have re-torqued my rear hubs, wouldn't have upgraded my valve retainers, and tightened my oil filters to spec. What else might I have overlooked here? Thanks for the info y'all.

 

" What else might I have overlooked here? "

Valve adjustment.

 

12 years of ownership with heavy track duty, always tightened the pcx by HAND using the 7/8 markings. No problems.

I have recently mounted a "stopper" for extra piece of mind though.

Torqueing the filter when the instructions are so clear and easy is indeed overkill. And if you need a wrench to do 7/8 perhaps you should spend some time at the gym?

 

I can't find the vendor version of the filter backspin stopper right now because I'm at work, and I have a picture of what I did floating around in a thread or 2 on here but I can't access my file server from work but I'll try to post a pic of it again later.

Basically all I did was buy a pack of thick rubber bands that were a good size to snugly fit around the filter but not too tight, a worm gear clamp, and a small stain less chain and stainless spring. You can probably see where I'm going with this... but if not I fit the rubber band around the filter to protect the filter from the worm gear clamp I wrapped around it, hooked a piece of the chain around the worm gear tightening part and ran it towards the front of the car I found a place I could hook the other end safely, put the spring in the middle but farther away (it's the part most susceptible to breaking under heat) and viola. Just gotta make sure the worm gear clamp isn't super tight because I'm pretty sure the filter expands a little when hot and under oil pressure.

 

You should feel paranoid with that Purolator filter. They've had a big rash of filter failures. Lots of people on Bobistheoilguy.com have cut open their filters and found torn media. I used to use that filter on my wife's car but not any more.

With the high pressures and flow in our engines I'd find another brand. And I suggest that after you change it out, cut it open and see if the media is torn.