One of the interesting ideas I've heard here on BITOG is the theory that in modern, clean running engines, the oil filter is going the way of the human appendix -- it's still there, but it does not really do anything.
Well, I just had to do a little digging for myself. The oil filter in the pics below was removed from my car's Nissan/Infiniti VQ35 series V-6. The car has only 8k miles on it. I made the switch to syn (GC) back at 6k miles. My intent is to use this fill as an experiment. I ran this filter for the first 2k, a Mobil-1, and have now put on a same-sized K&N. I decided to go from max filtration to max flow, to see if it had any effect on a hot idle knocking/rapping sound I hear occasionally.
Anyway, here's an overall look at what I did:
Looking into the can from about this view, after removing the element, I became alarmed when I noticed a large amount of metal flakes floating in the oil that had been on the dirty side, thank goodness:
It's hard to pick up in a photo, but here's a closer view. What you see (white specks on oil) are the flakes that are near the surface of the oil. The deeper ones don't show.
I also found at least a half dozen large shards of metal like the one inside the red circle, throughout the dirty side of the element.
Finally, here's a shot that tries to capture the very noticeable difference between the clean side and the dirty sides of the filter. Again, it's harder to see here than it is in "real life." And this filter has been in service for only 2k miles.
While I fully realize that my engine is still concluding its break in (I sure hope that's why there's all this crud in my filter!), I'm still amazed at the amount of stuff I found in this relatively short-service filter. I certainly would not want all this stuff getting back into my engine. In my mind at least, the "useless appendage" theory is fading fast. Any thoughts on this???
Well, I just had to do a little digging for myself. The oil filter in the pics below was removed from my car's Nissan/Infiniti VQ35 series V-6. The car has only 8k miles on it. I made the switch to syn (GC) back at 6k miles. My intent is to use this fill as an experiment. I ran this filter for the first 2k, a Mobil-1, and have now put on a same-sized K&N. I decided to go from max filtration to max flow, to see if it had any effect on a hot idle knocking/rapping sound I hear occasionally.
Anyway, here's an overall look at what I did:
Looking into the can from about this view, after removing the element, I became alarmed when I noticed a large amount of metal flakes floating in the oil that had been on the dirty side, thank goodness:
It's hard to pick up in a photo, but here's a closer view. What you see (white specks on oil) are the flakes that are near the surface of the oil. The deeper ones don't show.
I also found at least a half dozen large shards of metal like the one inside the red circle, throughout the dirty side of the element.
Finally, here's a shot that tries to capture the very noticeable difference between the clean side and the dirty sides of the filter. Again, it's harder to see here than it is in "real life." And this filter has been in service for only 2k miles.
While I fully realize that my engine is still concluding its break in (I sure hope that's why there's all this crud in my filter!), I'm still amazed at the amount of stuff I found in this relatively short-service filter. I certainly would not want all this stuff getting back into my engine. In my mind at least, the "useless appendage" theory is fading fast. Any thoughts on this???
