Amsoil BE-90 plugged after 12k

[olympic]

Yesterday I was drawing my 12k mile oil sample on my 03 Montana and then proceeded to change the FF filter. The van had just been shut off so everything was warm but the BE90 bypass filter was cold. I thought this may be normal for a cold winter day so I grabbed ahold of the other BE90 on the transmission circuit and it was toasty warm. So the engine bypass filter is definitely plugged.

I havn't changed many of these filters yet but they've never plugged up this soon. Could it be from the cold weather and condenstaion? Has anyone else noticed that their bypass filters don't last as long in cold weather? Everything else apears normal and the oil looked very clean after the filter change and 1L top up.

PS-look for my 12k mile Esso XD3 UOA early next week.

 

[Steve S]

The filter must be working.

 

[Tommy]

If this is a stand-alone bypass filter, (not a dual-remote) I would bet that it is only the orifice that is clogged, not the filter itself.

 

[Mike_dup1]

How many miles on VAN?

How many miles on BP Filter?

If the van is high miles and the filter was only recently installed, it may be used up?

 

[olympic]

The van has 100k on it , the filter has 12k. It's a dual remote setup. This isn't the first run of synthetic either so I'm not sure what has plugged it up so soon. I guess I'll have to cut it open and see.

Maybe the BE90 is a tad small to expect 25k out of it. I'll have to check if there's room for a BE100.

 

[Tommy]

Maybe the valve in the Dual-Remote head is stuck? I have heard of people removing the valve altogether to bump up the bypass flow. The Amsoil bypass filter has a ton of capacity, my old Volvo can't even plug one up in a year with 40,000 KM use.

 

[Rob Taggs]

Pull it off and cut it open. Its just a rebadged Hastings. We use Hastings at work. The only problems we have experienced is the filters spinning loose from engine vibration and leaking all over the place. We run ours for 6,000 miles due to the trucks idleing as much as they do, probably 50% or more of the time.

 

[Tommy]

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Pull it off and cut it open. Its just a rebadged Hastings

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I think we are talking about two different filters.....the bypass filter we are talking about here does not use pleated paper, it has stacked discs of compressed cellulose.

 

[Tommy]

If the filter is in fact plugged, (which I doubt) what is it plugged with? There would have to be a serious problem for the engine to be generating that much debris, soot, metal or whatever.

 

[Gary Allan]

If this occured after you changed the ff ..then it's normal if your biasing valve is shot. I used my Permacool mount as a dual mount ..and with a clean ff ..the bypass didn't get fully warm until the ff had some resistance to it.

 

[olympic]

This may have been an error on my part. I changed the bypass filter and ran the van at high idle for 10 minutes and the bypass was still cold. So it must take longer for it to start flowing and warm up. I'll check it again after a longer trip.

 

[Mike_dup1]

quote:

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It draws approximately ten percent of the oil at any one time and traps the extremely small, wear-causing contaminants and water that full-flow filters can’t remove. The AMSOIL By-Pass Filter typically filters all the oil in the system several times an hour.

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[Steve S]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tommy:
Maybe the valve in the Dual-Remote head is stuck? I have heard of people removing the valve altogether to bump up the bypass flow. The Amsoil bypass filter has a ton of capacity, my old Volvo can't even plug one up in a year with 40,000 KM use.

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Tommy the "valve" setup is what causes the oil to go through the bypass filter .Look at the amsoil cut away .

 

[olympic]

Yep, that's why I thought it may be saturated with water(condensation). This one probably wasn't, I just didn't run the engine long enough for it to start flowing.

I have another van with 16k on the bypass filter and it's still flowing. I'm going to try and make a point of checking it once in a while to try and establish if/when they do plug up. Same thing goes for the bypass filters on all my transmissions. 50k is the highest mileage so far and they're still working fine.

 

[msparks]

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Originally posted by olympic:
This may have been an error on my part. I changed the bypass filter and ran the van at high idle for 10 minutes and the bypass was still cold. So it must take longer for it to start flowing and warm up. I'll check it again after a longer trip.

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If it is cold outside it will take a good 45min-1hr for the oil to start flowing through that by-pass.

You have to remember that the media is very dense and is compress with a heavy duty spring (90lbs) So unless the oil is up to full operating temperature it will not flow through it as well.

 

[Tommy]

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Tommy the "valve" setup is what causes the oil to go through the bypass filter

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Actually, it is oil pressure that causes the oil to go through the filter.

 

[Gary Allan]

Tommy ..without the biasing valve ..the flow through the bypass element is next to ZERO. I had this setup and with a new element in parallel to it ..only a very small localized area got warm. It took a few miles to accumulate enough debris in the ff to make the bypass accept any reasonable flow. The biasing valve assures that you are more toward parity with the ff. If the bypass is 100 times more dense than the ff ..it gets 1/100th the flow (close enough).

It's like the diffence between a 2ft pipe and a 1/4" pipe. Sure pressure drives oil through both. The biasing valve just assures that the bypass will get all the oil that it can handle. The oil pump will take care of the rest (moving the valve if it needs to).

 

[Tommy]

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If you look at an AMSOIL Dual Remote Bypass filter system, you will note the "restricter" ball and spring.
In some cases, depending on the location of the filter head, vibrations have been found, and these will sometimes set up unusual noises in the vehicle. Removing the restrictor will reduce the flow through the bypass element from about 20% to about 15% (according to AMSOIL bypass designer).

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You are correct Gary....without the restrictor valve, the bypass filter would see less flow. I was going from memory from an old post, (see above) and remembered wrong! It does make sense.

 

[Bill]

olympic,

The orifice (that regulates the oil flow through the filter) of your By-pass set-up could be plugged, I have used the Amsoil By-pass (By-pass set-up I used was a single Filter unit, not a Dual Remote set-up) and would test the filter by placing my hand on the filter,
upon testing one of my filter elements, it was cool, not hot like the engine.
I took off the filter to look at the orifice opening,
I could not see anything in the opening but after placing the filter back on the vehicle, the By-pass filter got hot after running the engine, I figured there was something in the hole of the orifice and removing the filter element from the By-pass baseplate dislodged whatever was plugging the orifice (I think the orifice size is 0.0032" dia.),
this could be your case.

 

[msparks]

This reminds me of a time when I decided to change the oil in my BMW motorcycle. It was around Feb and the weather was cooler in El Paso. Probably in the 50's.

Anyhow I had ridden to a friends house about 20 miles away. Stayed for about 1hr, and was going to change the oil as soon as I got home.

So when I arrived at the house, I immediately dropped the drain plug to hopefully get most of the oil out. When I did, it was luke warm at best. this was after riding over 20 miles at speed. Then engine was hot, the oil coolers were hot, the oil as only warm to the touch(it will usually burn the heck out of me)

My advice is to check the by-pass filter after at least 1 hr of operation, and idling doesn't count, it has to have a load on the engine.