Allegedly, the nut on the K&N just tears off if the filter sticks badly, so no great advantage there. Smear the rubber seal with oil and tighten fairly firmly but by hand only should make it easy to remove next time
There have been reports of the nut searing off the K&N filters normally due to poor welding. There are members who swear by the K&N filters though. In my experience it doesn't make a jot of difference if you lube up the rubber seal, its still a bee of a job getting the filter off due to lack of purchase you can achieve on the filter casing, and before the flaming starts, yes I do lube up the rubber ring on both my bikes. Of the two the 916 is the hardest to get off and the hardest to get oil tight.
Lube the new seal,tighten as hard as you can with your hands then a bit more with some tool or other , job done.Never had any problem when its time for filter change.Im touching wood as I type.But thats another story.As for your flakes,put them on a magnet.If they stick then they are steel,probably bit of gearbox if they dont,then could be rocker.As said,if inspected recently must be something else.
With regards to knowing if the flakes are chrome or not, apparently there is an easy test. Obviously steel is magnetic but aluminium isn't so, taken from another Ducati site; "Flaking Rockers or Crankshaft Oil Gallery Plug? Here’s how you tell ... Battery acid is dilute sulphuric acid H2SO4 Chromium is soluble in dilute sulphuric acid. chromium + sulphuric acid yields chromium sulphate + hydrogen gas 2Cr + 3H2SO4 > Cr2 [SO4]3 + 3H2 So, all that you need to do is to put the flakes caught by your oil screen into a small amount of acid drawn from your battery. If you see hydrogen gas being rapidly given-off and the colour of the flakes darken to the violet hue of chromium sulphate, you’ve probably got flaking rockers. No hydrogen release and no colour change means you've got aluminium left over from machining operations, or your pre-2000MY crankshaft oil galley plug is backing out."
If you search you will see i had the same problem with oil filter the other year and after hours of stress/swearing/abuse I had to use needle nose pilers, a ring spanner & a length of scaffolding pole to get mine off. Total nightmare. When I fitted the replacement one, hand tightning wasnt enough to stop oil leaking out, and (if i remember correct) reading the manual, it said you have to torque it up. First time ive ever had to torque up an oil filter, but it did stop the leak. It also explained why it was so hard to remove the old one. I too have gone the k&n route, so will see how the nut holds up when I do my next oil change.
