The oil filter is your engine’s first and most vital line of protection. Accountable for—you guessed it—filtering out dangerous particles and particles, it performs a significant function within the well being of any motor. It seems what kind of oil filter you utilize is simply as vital as utilizing one.
The Complete Seal Piston Rings YouTube channel put collectively a enjoyable and scientific evaluation evaluating an all-metal “display screen” wire mesh-type oil filter to a conventional paper-based filter. Utilizing considered one of its bench-testing V-8s, it pre-mixed iron particles into the oil and ran the engine with each filters. The purpose was to see which filter would decide up extra of the iron over a set of runs to redline. The less particles of iron left within the engine, the higher.
The outcomes are decisive. Whereas the paper filter was in a position to filter out a large 85 % of particulates current within the oil, the metal-based filter was solely in a position to filter away 9 % of the particles current. Yikes.
That is right down to the depth of the paper itself, says host Lake Pace Jr. The paper’s membrane-like materials permits it to do a greater job filtering versus the steel, which might solely catch particles right down to a sure measurement. After that, it isn’t catching something.
The testing had some critical real-world results on the engine, too. In an hour of operating the engine on a bench dyno with the paper filter, no energy from the engine was misplaced. However with the steel filter, the engine misplaced 10 horsepower in a single hour of operating, indicating some fairly critical put on at locations just like the piston rings.
So whereas these steel display screen filters may look fancy and high-tech, they’re very probably doing extra injury than good on your engine.
