Originally Posted By: MLAII
The concept of your bypass installation on an automatic transmission is positively brilliant. I am familiar with the AMSOIL BMK23 System, I am not familiar with the Motor Guard M100 filter system. I did a little searching, it seems the one I looked at was an air filtration system. is this what you installed on your transmission?
Is the Contamination (Dirt-Holding) Capacity of the filter available as well the Particle Capture Efficiency and Beta Rating? (i.e.)- (Bx= Um size?). Did you install the MGM100 to trap moisture? I am assuming the Motor Guard M100 is a depth loading type media vs. surface loading.
I like that you base your oil change intervals on UOA sample data and you are using particle counting. The ISO Particle Count will confirm two things, the efficiency of your filters as well determining filter service change interval and secondly trending the degradation of the oil performance as it depletes with time. This is valuable tool in making lubricant selection choices based on the performance of the oils.
Industry data states 75 percent of all hydraulic systems fail due to contaminated and or aging transmission/hydraulic fluid. Contamination causes aging/degradation of fluids and hydraulic systems failure for numerous reasons.
A new hydraulic fluid can contain 5,000 particles per 1 ml that are 5 µm or larger, which exceeds the level recommended by most manufacturers for normal operation. Hence, proper lubricant selection is of essence, a good practice is prefilter the oil using a filter cart before installing in your equipment.
Unfortunately, particles as small as 0.5 µm can be harmful to the system actuators, servo valves and proportional valves. One can conclude that keeping the lubricant clean of dirt and contaminates will greatly extend the reliability and life of the transmission.
Given the cost to replace or rebuild an automatic transmission here in Canada exceeding $3000, installing additional filtration is invaluable. I truly believe that the North American manufacturers could greatly improve the reliability of automatic transmissions by factory design, installing bypass filtration in the transmissions, as well magnetic filtration to trap ferrous particles. Using the ISO particle count Life Extension Tables, it is possible to extend the life of the transmission 9 times by reducing the ISO from 22/21/18 to 14/13/10 plus extending the life of the transmission/hydraulic fluid 4-5 times.
Congratulations on your installation and we look forward to UOA sample results with particle counts.
Thanks for your positive reply,
The MotorGuard M100 unit I've used pre-dates the filters that MotorGuard now makes for air filtration (essentially tightly would toilet paper). Starting in the mid to late 70's MotorGuard switched from oil filtration to air filtration and modified the M100 unit with plastic internals and new filter media to accomplish this task (now labelled the M30 unit). MotorGuard air filters are some of the best units now sold to clean compressed air. Prior to the switch they made the M100 unit I now have and in the day was one of the best bypass systems on the market. The M100 uses a roll of toilet paper as the filtering media and compresses it as you tighten the 2 halves together, creating a better seal and denser paper roll. Unfortunately there are no Beta or capture ratings I'm aware of. The unit is a depth loading type media (paper cellulose) and in the day claimed to scrub the oil down to less that 2um. I've installed it to see if it traps any noticable particles from the clutch plates and internal parts of the trans etc. Only time will tell, I'll take another sample in 5000 kms and change the roll of toilet paper to see how it looks. I'll be posting the results on this site, so stay tune for further updates