Oil spraying everywhere, My car's impression of the Exxon Valdez Options

[mudfoot76]

This all started last week. It was relatively cold at the time, upper-30s, but the weather was nice so I decide to take a drive. I've had it out in as cold and colder temperatures before. It is running nicely, everything gets warmed up, no drama. I park the car for awhile. I get back, start it up, everything seems normal. I begin to drive away and about 30 seconds later the green light blinks a couple times, then comes on and stays on. I immediately pull into a parking lot and shut it down. Oil is dripping from everywhere, and I can see a trail from the street. Call AAA, get towed. Remove the oil filter and it has "bulged" in the top. It is a K&N oil filter, and I had Castrol 20W50 at the time. I thought that this was strange though, since the car had been running fine when I left home earlier, and I previously have been out at the track when the air temp was in the upper 20s and the engine never did this before. But I suspect maybe the 20w50 is too heavy for the cold, so I have another K&N filter, but this time put in 5w30. Same thing happens to the second, brand new filter (my garage is heated). I last changed oil at the end of august and have done one track weekend plus many days of fun-driving without any troubles at all.

I search around on this forum and find some information about 6cyl cars blowing their oil filters but seemingly nothing about 4cyl cars. I read up on the oil pressure relief spring, but that seems to be upstream of the oil filter on 4cyl cars. There was a post that mentions blowing compressed air through the oil cooler? Can one remove the oil cooler without dropping the engine first? I'm confused as to what might be the problem with my engine ( 2.0L 4cyl)

What should I be looking for or checking at this point?

Thanks!

UPDATE - 27 Nov 2006 - scroll down for pictures