The Ugly Truth About Your Engines Oil Filter - It Will Let You Down When You Really Need It The Most

the ugly truth about oil filters they don't want you to know and this is actually this is a video I should have done a long time ago but it never occurred to me it did after I saw a video last night or night before um and this is it is on a popular Channel and they wiped out the cam in a small block Mopar and as they were surveying the damage though they had wiped out the lifter I should say and as they're surveying the damage you see that the lifter wore right through the bottom and they made a comment that everything in the engine should be okay because they had a good oil filter on it oh okay oil filters are not what you think they are or they're not what they're supposed to be because they only filter under certain circumstances in those circumstances are under the mildest conditions now this filter right here this is just a generic it's just an off-brand filter I cut it open to use this as an illustration but you have to understand it these screw-on type of oil filters all have the same basic components the same way all engines have pistons and all engines have crankshafts well all spin-on filters have these same basic components so it's irrelevant and when we talk about when they talk about oil filter quality they're always talking about the media involved so the media would be this stuff right here which is supposed to catch whatever particles impurities chunks of metal whatever happens to come through and there are different levels different qualities of that media but when nobody ever bothers to tell you is that that media is only in use under very certain circumstances because this oil filter like every other type of spin-on filter you find has two bypass systems in them and anytime you're over now this this ranges between 5 and 25 pounds of oil pressure which for the vast majority of high performance cars is all the time the bypass is open and the oil is not being forced through this media instead the oil is being bypassed so just show you how this works at the top of the filter here we have these small holes and these small holes are what is being fed by the pump so I'll publish forcing oil into the filter and these holes have a one-way flapper valve which is this rubber piece right here so the oil pump pushes the oil through those holes it gets past this piece of rubber and then in theory it goes down the side of the filter between the canister and this inner piece and gets forced through the media and that's where the filtering takes place but at the bottom of the filter like I said it's an old filter I just cut this open real quick because I had it on hand so there's nothing significant about this particular filter but at the bottom of this assembly is this spring and this spring is the bypass so what happens is now as the oil is being forced through these top holes once the pressure reaches a predetermined amount and on most filters it's around 20 psi the pressure actually pushes down on the spring and when the pressure pushes down on the spring the oil is then allowed to bypass and go straight to the engine which is what that big hole is right there so do you see what's happening here when you first start the engine let's just say for example I'll use like typical numbers you start an engine and it's cold and it's got 40 pounds of of oil pressure well that 40 pounds of oil pressure is working against this spring over here and it's causing the bypass action to happen so no filter no oil is being forced through the filter element now as the engine warms up and let's say the hot aisle drops down to 20 pounds 18 20 pounds like that well then at that point the bypass isn't being activated and all of the oil that's coming through these outer holes is going excuse me going through the media and it's being filtered as it should be as soon as you give it gas any oil pressure goes up to 30 40 50 pounds whatever it is on your engine it's a bypass you is pushing the media away creating this Gap right here and now the oil is going straight from here to here zero filtration so if you're going down the drag strip let's just say and you've got 30 or 40 pounds of oil pressure or 60 pounds of oil pressure trust me when I tell you there is no oil being filtered zero oil is being filtered all of that oil is is being diverted because the spring compresses all that oil is being diverted from these outer holes to the inner hole and the engine is getting on filtered oil so if you wipe out a cam or a bearing or anything like that yes you may get some you may see some you can't open a filter you may see some metal in there there's no question about it but the vast majority of that metal while the engine was under load bypassed the filter completely and went straight into the engine you won't necessarily see it in the oil pan but you will see it gathered up inside the engine in the oil galleys and every place else there's a second there's a second bypass on this and I'll talk about that in a second but that's the mean fallacy about oil filters people are always talking about the quality of the media you know how efficient is the media has nothing to do with it when this thing is under pressure the media is being bypassed and that oil is just circulating right through the motor like it wasn't even there the second bypass on these is found at the bottom that's this little Jammy right here and this is here basically for people who don't bother changing their oil filters and the media becomes clogged well this allows that oil instead of instead of just being trapped there it'll let this opens up and it allows the oil to come through the center and out to the rest of the engine but all of these spin-on filters have two bypasses but that main bypass the spring that's at the bottom of the canister that's the one anything and some of these engines so many oil filters you notice that manufacturers will expect different oil filters so like for instance you could have two or three oil filters that have the same diameter and they have the same the same threads but they'll be different numbers and that's because the bypass spring is rated at different values so like for instance an engine with uh they use a very thin oil with variable valve timing we'll use an oil pressure bypass that starts at five six seven pounds because the VVT system needs to operate at those lower oil pressures it's a placebo effect you're not actually filtering your oil when the oil needs to be filtered the most this happens passively and it happens at low RPM low pressure low stress situations it'll do some filtering but beyond that they're all the same they all bypass and send the oil right through if you really want to protect your engine I've used oberg oil filters in the past those are in aluminum housing I don't have one here to show you guys but it's an aluminum housing it's a two-piece housing and it has a replaceable screen or cleanable screen in the center it's like you buy the filter once and you just clean it every use they work really good for applications where you may get chunks of metal where you can expect to find some bearing issues or camshaft issues an engine that is is an Extreme Performance Engine that's known to put some metal in the oil during normal use those lowberg filters are your best bet but for if you're dealing with a screw-on canister style filter I'm telling you it's only filtering when you don't really need it when you really need it that spring is forcing this is is just it's stopping the action through the filter so they're also these early engines when before they got to these Universal spin-on Canister type of filters engines like small block Chevys for instance the early Chrysler hemis they actually had an oil filter bypass uh uh channel that would either be in the block or it would be screwed into the block as an adapter and so that if the canister got clogged or the canister couldn't flow enough oil because think about it you're trying to put it as a thick a thick heavy liquid through that fine media and get it filtered you need some sort of bypass so before they started with these more or less Universal spin-on filters they would actually incorporate a bypass system into either the block or an oil filter adapter so there you go I hope you got something I know a lot of you guys are probably gonna like lose sleep over this now my oil filter doesn't work it never worked it never worked this isn't news this is but like I said they don't want you to know this because I mean that's it's just the truth if you've got a race engine something that only operates above 30 or 40 PSI you might as well just I mean it does nothing it does absolutely nothing I hope you got something out of that I'll see you tomorrow

Channel: Uncle Tony's Garage

Views: 65,489

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Id: OwwG_su6R_Y

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2023