Sandwich adapter, ball seat wear

Joined
Dec 3, 2023
Messages
418
Location
Saskatchewan Canada
I took the sandwich adapter off my 2.3 duratec to change out the o ring and discovered that the ball has almost worn through the seat, placed it beside a new adapter and measured the ball height of the seat between the two, it has worn through .090" of material and is almost ready to launch out of the bore!

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Are you sure the first one started out identical to the new one? That seems like an odd way to wear in that short usage unless the AL is extremely soft....and where did the metal debris go? I would be more likely to believe that is was like that originally and the ball was set deeper. The two parts were made on different dies. I could be wrong.
 
Are you sure the first one started out identical to the new one? That seems like an odd way to wear in that short usage unless the AL is extremely soft....and where did the metal debris go? I would be more likely to believe that is was like that originally and the ball was set deeper. The two parts were made on different dies. I could be wrong.
Yes, you are wrong, :) I had both new and in the same box. small aluminum shavings were being found in the full flow filters pleats, I Iwas wondering where they were coming from. If you held on to the pressure feed line, it was rapidly pulsating, the spring/ball was oscillating pretty good, I guess a steel ball bearing is a lot tougher than the cast aluminum seat, somethings got to give.
 
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I drilled a 1.5 mm ( .060" ) hole, 7 o'clock in the unused adapter first picture, and it still pulsates, not as severe but still there, I'm not going to do any more drilling, it will lose all bypass function if I keep chasing it, the sandwich will probably work just fine on a different engine, but not this one, bad oil pump harmonics. I have a new old stock Frantz one port sandwich I can put on, I recieved an aluminum oil cap off ebay today, going to drill into that instead. :)
The hammer in action....
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I center punched the ball and spring out of the adapter, now where did that spring go after it hit the wall? It will show up eventually. lol.
I always thought the ball was 5/16's, very hard to see when it's in the bore, a bit surprised that it is 3/8's, that should flow plenty of oil.
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I drove around for 2 hours with this adapter, the first thing I saw when I took it off is that it looks like the seat is wearing already! I never wrote down the depth measurement when new at the time, I tried to take a picture in the same spot, angle as the the original pic, the tip of the ball is now nearly flush with the surface.
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I had a similar experience,but in my case the oil filter bypass ball tried to hammer its way out of the filter mount housing.About 20 years ago I purchased a Motorgaurd M30 bypass filter from Ralph Wood.The kit also included a Permacool sandwich adapter.The vehicle was a Nissan Navara with a TD27 diesel engine.Ralph advised to use the Permacool adapter as it made the installation very easy,no need to drill a hole in the sump for an oil return.Things went very well,the filter heated up quickly and the oil lab tests were great.However I was aware of a buzzing sound coming from the engine.A year or so later I removed the spin on filter and adapter.To my horror the oil filter bypass ball in the filter mount was nearly popping out,much like the ball in the above thread.Turned out the Nissan engine has the filter bypass in the filter mount attached to the engine block.The correct spin on has no bypass built in.Obviously I changed the bypass filter plumbing to a conventional system and used a filter with a bypass valve.Also plugged up where the bypass ball went.Truck went on to do many more trouble free miles,no harm done.
 
I had a similar experience,but in my case the oil filter bypass ball tried to hammer its way out of the filter mount housing.About 20 years ago I purchased a Motorgaurd M30 bypass filter from Ralph Wood.The kit also included a Permacool sandwich adapter.The vehicle was a Nissan Navara with a TD27 diesel engine.Ralph advised to use the Permacool adapter as it made the installation very easy,no need to drill a hole in the sump for an oil return.Things went very well,the filter heated up quickly and the oil lab tests were great.However I was aware of a buzzing sound coming from the engine.A year or so later I removed the spin on filter and adapter.To my horror the oil filter bypass ball in the filter mount was nearly popping out,much like the ball in the above thread.Turned out the Nissan engine has the filter bypass in the filter mount attached to the engine block.The correct spin on has no bypass built in.Obviously I changed the bypass filter plumbing to a conventional system and used a filter with a bypass valve.Also plugged up where the bypass ball went.Truck went on to do many more trouble free miles,no harm done.
I went with this setup, put 700 km on it now, using a needle valve (not pictured) set to 600 mL per minute @ 2500 rpm, seems to be working ok but it takes twice as long to start heating up.
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Interesting thread here, I am starting to think its caused by the oil holes aligning in the crankshaft in a 4 cylinder engine, every stroke two journals are open to the oil gallery and create a pulse to the backside off the adapters ball/spring.
 
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