LSJr Interviews Containing Oil Filter Efficiency
- Thread starter garageman402
- Start date
Funny story - that was the joke I said to myself when I first heard this claim. I’ll watch to see the test results though.If you leave the oil filter on long enough, it will become a 100% efficient "black hole" and no wear metals will ever get by it.
This is a good video posted by Lubrication Explained where Rafe is interviewing this person with their PhD who's been in the filter industry for 30 years. Starting ~35:15, he goes into detail about filter efficiency. At ~36:20, he says that in certain, well-constructed filter elements you will see an increase in efficiency, but then goes on to talk about poorly-constructed filters where the opposite happens. Toward the end, he also discusses counterfeit filters on the market.
Definitely a better explanation from an industry pro. My questions would be is he talking about industrial machinery filters? Does any of this apply to automotive oil filters?
Reason I ask is this is what a Hydac filter looks like.
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There were a lot of references to industrial applications, but also consumer-level applications. He also discussed differences between air and fluid filtration due to how particles flow and forces acting upon each.
I did find Hydac spin on hydraulic filters. But nothing automotive related yet.
When he was at Donaldson they were specifically talking about air filters, nothing about oil filters. That's why LSJr asked in one of his videos if his viewers wanted him to visit Donaldson again about oil filters.
Listening to the times you reference, what he describes about the dP vs flow as the filter loads up matches what was seen in Ascent's ISO efficiency test data - LINK. And he basically says "cake theory" with liquid filters is a misnomer, and only may apply towards the end of life when the amount of debris collected is high and is successful in blocking all the pores on the surface and the dP starts spiking upward (seen in the Ascent data too), which would indicate increased filter clogging starting to happen.
However, what he explains about an oil filter getting more efficient sounds like when the filter is nearly clogged, as shown by the Purolator/M+H graph below. Ascent's ISO testing definitely showed that all the filters he tested lost efficiency pretty much from near the start to the end of the test runs, like this one from his testing showing the particle count data plotted out - LINK. The high efficiency filters didn't lose much efficiency, and the lower efficiency filters lost more efficiency with loading. Lower efficiency filters shed more debris with loading than high efficiency filters.
Ascent didn't run the test to the point where the efficiency would have started to increase when they were near totally clogged with debris, so they all showed a constant decrease in efficiency all the way through the test run. If someone is calming that oil filters get more efficient with use only near end of life just because they build a cake layer when they are nearly 100% clogged, and ignore the fact that they constantly lose efficiency from the start to the near clogged state, then they are not really understanding how oil filters behave from new as they load up. If he's claiming that oil filter efficiency stays constant, and then suddenly increases when it's nearly clogged, then that's not agreeing with what the ISO test data shows or the graph below.
Ascent's ISO efficiency test isn't the only one that showed the filters decreased in efficiency with loading ... so did this one.
https://www.kitplanes.com/oil-filter-testing/
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And of course liquid vs gas implies large differences on that MINOR detail ;-).
BTW - I'm wondering if LSJr's claim that oil filters get more efficient with use due to particle "attraction forces" to each other inside the filter (see 2nd video in post 1 - listen from 7:24 - and he does mention "oil analysis", hummm) is because he may see the rate of wear metals (ie, Fe ppm/1000 miles) decrease the longer the OCI goes.
But, as discussed in many oil forum threads, a decrease in wear metal rate seen the longer an OCI goes seems to typically be from the AW/AF additive tribofilm building up on surfaces over time and resulting in better wear control and a decreased wear rate. Not from the oil filter becoming more efficient and acting like a "Filter Mag" for like particles. There have also been studies that show that the wear rate decreases as the OCI gets longer due to a building tribofilm. An oil change will strip the AF/AW tribofilm off the surface, and the wear rate will increase in the early stages right after an oil change, and then again the rate will decrease as the oil is ran longer due to a new tribofilm building up.
If he believes the oil filter is becoming more efficient because the oil analysis shows a decrease in the wear metals rate (ie, ppm/1000 miles), then why doesn't he even mention this when he's showing and explaining all of his oil analysis date he uses in many of his videos.
But, as discussed in many oil forum threads, a decrease in wear metal rate seen the longer an OCI goes seems to typically be from the AW/AF additive tribofilm building up on surfaces over time and resulting in better wear control and a decreased wear rate. Not from the oil filter becoming more efficient and acting like a "Filter Mag" for like particles. There have also been studies that show that the wear rate decreases as the OCI gets longer due to a building tribofilm. An oil change will strip the AF/AW tribofilm off the surface, and the wear rate will increase in the early stages right after an oil change, and then again the rate will decrease as the oil is ran longer due to a new tribofilm building up.
If he believes the oil filter is becoming more efficient because the oil analysis shows a decrease in the wear metals rate (ie, ppm/1000 miles), then why doesn't he even mention this when he's showing and explaining all of his oil analysis date he uses in many of his videos.
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Dude. I learned about the decreasing wear rate on this forum years ago and I ain’t a professional in the area. If LSJR doesn’t know about it….. however, if his causality is wrongly placed then he should eat his own dog food.
My understanding is this occurs when changing brands or maybe formulations, but not when using the same oil out and back in. How and why would the same oil of the same chemistry even know what's new vs old?
Just searching around right now, said it can happen regardless if the oil is a different brand or not. Has to do with the level of the fresh additives that can strip away some of the old established AF/AW tribofilm. Maybe one can find a few controlled studies where they verified this when changing the oil with the same exact oil brand too.
"A new oil change, even when using the same brand and type of oil, can partially strip or "scavenge" the established anti-wear (AW) tribofilm, specifically the ZDDP (zinc dialkyl dithiophosphate) layer, off engine parts. Fresh motor oil contains strong detergents and additives. When introduced to an engine, these new detergents can attack and remove the older, more chemically stable tribofilm layer created by the previous oil."
This is also one theory on the Ford Coyote "BBQ Tick" (aka "Typewriter Tick") that will show up right after an oil change, even if the same exact oil is used - many Mustang owners who always use the same oil brand (mostly Motorcraft) have said this on the various Mustang chat boards. Stripping of the AF/AW tribofilm creates more friction, and as a result, something in the Coyote starts ticking (rod big ends "dancing" side-to-side on the crankshaft journals perhaps) when the friction level is changed. Also, on the Coyote, if an anti-friction additive is added to the oil while the engine is running, the BBQ Tick will literally disappear in a minute.
All kinds of threads on BITOG about the subject of the AF/AW tribofilm being affected by an oil change - some even go back around 20 years.
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^^^ There's no logical reason I can think of why an oil filter won't also lose efficiency in real use as it loads up with debris, because captured debris is captured debris regardless of how long it takes the debris to load up in the media. And it's the captured debris that causes an oil filter to lose efficiency, as seen over and over in the ISO 4548-12 test data that has been shown many times in this forum.
LSJr’s newest video has a compelling argument showing particle size decreasing while no filter change over 5k miles. Skip to 8:08 for data/talk. Maybe some of the elders can school us on his points.
4wd
$50 site donor 2026
Dun woke up dem howler monkeys 
Compelling? lol
Engines tend to produce the most break in material early in their life.
Break-in tends to taper off until it stabilizes at some unknown time thousands of miles (or hundreds of hours) later.
How about an alternative explanation: dumping the oil several times in short succession as the engine is breaking in results in lower particle counts because…wait for it…the particles are now in the drain pan, and were replaced by new, clean oil.
I like Lake. He seems to be a nice guy, and occasionally has good info in his videos. But, I’m still standing by waiting for any real evidence to his claim that oil filters get more efficient as they load up.
Is he preparing us for a re-release of Magnetec?
Yeah, what he's showing doesn't prove the oil filter got more efficient with use. All it showed was that the engine was producing less particulate as it continued to rack up some miles during break-in and by the 3rd OCI of only 1400 miles the oil was still pretty clean, regardless of what oil filter was on the engine. Lake needs to go to Donaldson as he's eluded to in the past and do a dive into oil filter efficiency testing and what that shows.
Looks like Lake caught the efficiency claim on the Boss before Purolator removed if from their website, see time 2:50 in the video.
If Lake is worried about using a high efficiency oil filter, he should have swapped out that OEM Toyota filter right away.
The PC on the 3rd OCI only had 1400 miles on the oil. That along with the fact the engine is still breaking in but producing less particulate is why the PC ISO code was "cleaner" on OCI #3.
Using the ISO code isn't ideal compared to using the actual UOA particle counts from an ISO 4406 test. Each step up in the ISO code is twice the amount of particles per mL, so it's a pretty rough scale when comparing ISO codes. See the chart at time 9:40 in the video.
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