Oil Bypass Filtration

Thank you Roachie.

There was a discussion here a while ago about the wisdom or otherwise of intermediate oil changes between manufacturers' scheduled changes.

As you would expect there were opinions that were polar opposites, one being yes do it and the other saying with modern oils and motors it is a waste of money.

Your test results suggest the latter may be right. It also may justify Ford's 15k oil change schedule vs Mazda's 10k for the same motor.

I do intermediate oil changes if my BT50 has been working hard - eg extended touring close to GCM, particularly in hot conditions. I now wonder if I'm wasting my money.

How much does an analysis cost?

Cheers

Roaches.
Have you considered a second opinion to protect the heart of your beast? Just one testing regime may be not as accurate as you may desire and be giving you a skewed idea of reality.
While fine filtration will remove and hold more particulate matter than a normal filter, unless you are using a very good oil quality to start with I doubt the oil polymer and additive structure will last that long. The fine filter definitely doesn’t remove the acid or chemical composition which deteriorates with use and time.

From my contact with a Mobil dealer and lube line folk, ONLY Mobil 1 diesel oil allowed local B doubles to run, with oil monitoring, to last 40,000km, normal oil would not run to long distances.
Therefore, that second assessment of oil quality may be informative for you.

I have seen a relatively new Merc car at 50,000km and oil never changed, It was not healthy oil, very sick.
Are you really saving your engine? If it isn’t to do with cost then newer, healthy oil is far far better. Don’t be unduly persuaded by a report sheet which you are prepared to trust.

The toilet roll oil filters have been around since the mid 1950's.

One has to ask, if they are the ducks gonads, why aren't they standard fit, or why aren't more people using them?

The first question can be answered by the simple fact that manufacturers spend the least amount of money they can on, producing a vehicle.

Bean counters examine every part in the manufacturing process, to see where money can be saved.
Additional oil filters that may prolong engine life, and which mean more oil is required in the initial oil fill, are deemed totally unnecessary.

The second question can be answered simply by the fact that the toilet tissue oil filters are messy, and you need to utilise the correct type of tissue, and you need to have that tissue supply available.
In addition, there are sizeable costs involved in adding bypass filters, as well as additional oil requirements, as well as finding a location for the bypass filter.

On larger commercial vehicles and items of plant, positioning a bypass filter is relatively easy.
On smaller vehicles, it can be a PIA trying to find a spot to locate the filter.

In addition, there's a major concern with running additional oil hoses that pose a threat to the engine's life by becoming chafed and pumping out oil, unawares to the driver, until the oil pressure light comes on.

I have a mate who swore off the 6.5L Chev V8 diesel because they utilise a remote filter with hoses between the pump and filter - and he had a filter hose chafe, and the engine pumped out every last skerrick of oil (at night on a long country drive), and by the time he stopped from highway speed, the engine was toast.

I have very early experience of bypass filters. The first crawler tractor I owned (in 1965) was an Allis-Chalmers - and Allis-Chalmers fitted, as standard, the very good "Luberfiner" brand bypass oil filter.
Luberfiner started producing bypass filters before WW2.

The Luberfiner, however, did not use toilet tissue - it had a fairly standard design, but very large, filter element.
I think Franz was the first toilet tissue bypass oil filter.

My early memories of the Luberfiner was it was a messy and thankless task to change the filter in it.
Allis-Chalmers engine design was very good, and the Luberfiner added to the system helped improve engine life.

However, oil change periods were not "extended" by any substantial amount, by Allis-Chalmers, even though the Luberfiner was fitted.
A-C oil change periods were still the normal 250 hr period, in line with most manufacturers of the era.

There is one major advantage with the bypass filters (of any style).

They increase the total amount of oil available to the engine by a sizeable volume, thus improving engine cooling (as engine oil absorbs a lot of heat) - as well as improving lube ability, as there is simple more oil to absorb the waste products load.

It pays to remember that lubricating oils of any type - synthetic or standard crude base - have a cocktail of at least 7 additives added to the base oil, to produce the final product.
All those additives are designed to counter foaming, prevent corrosion, neutralise acids and water, hold solids such as carbon in suspension, and improve viscosity.

Up to 30% of an oil can be Viscosity Improvers - which are not oil. VI's are long-chain polymers that thicken when hot and thin when cold - the opposite of oil.

Thus VI's help keep oil viscosity stable through a wide range of temperatures and enable the oil to keep doing its lube work properly, over those large temperature ranges.

Additives deteriorate over time. They are unstable chemical compounds that are designed to chemically bond with targeted by-products of combustion.

Thus the reason for oil change periods.
The base oil does not degrade, but the additives that enable it to perform properly, do.

Caterpillar and other major manufacturers advise that the criteria for the lubricating ability of oil is the TBN - the Total Base Number.
The TBN is essentially a measurement of the value of the additives in the oil, and whether they have degraded to the point, where the oil needs to be changed.

Utilising a toilet tissue bypass filter means a substantial increase in the volume of oil available to the engine, and therefore a larger supply of oil additives.

As such, you can increase your manufacturer-specified oil change period with a toilet tissue bypass filter - simply because there is a substantially-increased oil supply for the engine, as compared to the manufacturers standard sump size.

At the end of the day though, with a bypass filter fitted and with extended oil change periods, a TBN test is still a vital check that needs to be done, to ensure that the oil additives are still up to the task.

Cheers, Ron.

Bill, what type of oil filtration are you using, is it a centrifuge system.

Just for interest to others as I expect you will know, Oil changes are normally arrived at by the fuel burn of the engines, the environment they operate in and idle time. They normally use either the klm's travelled or the hours which ever comes first.

I know cummins recommend changing oil say on road train work with a fuel burn of1.2 to 1.5 k/l using their recommended oil which is Valvoline premium blue 8100 at 30,000k and engines over 1.5 k/l at 50,000k.

If running very heavy and using more fuel they will bring it back to 20,000k.

Having said that I have seen very large stationary engines that use centrifuges and heaters to boil of contaminates and work totally on oil analysis, the changes can be in the many 10,000 of thousand of hours.

Anyway happy travels