Experience with the magnet pre-removing most of the solids (which are apparently ferrous and not clutch wear products like I originally thought) can lead you to consider longer oil filter use intervals.

The little tiny particles that can get through the paper still do get caught by the strong magnetic field projecting down the central steel perforated pipe as the magnetic field is still radiating out across each of the many little 1/8" hole diameters.  

If you want to think of it as a "premium plus" normal filtration job that's OK -- just remember it is using the cheap filter on a year long change interval and still performing like a premium plus filter for the entire extended period.  

An advantage to this "use the cheap filter and a magnet" method over an expensive premium plus element is the finer filtration paper in the premium plus filter might tend to plug up within a year if used without a supporting super magnet to pre-collect a lot of the metal trash which would be of a size to block up that fine synthetic paper element (such as in the STP Premium Plus filter).

It's worth thinking about -- pay a lot more for a shorter use time at the same actual metal removal efficiency?  Or pay half as much for twice as long (up to a year) at same actual metal removal efficiency?

Old Jedi Master Yoda would clout you on the noggin and take your light saber away for missing this sort of question ...

<grin>

But please do remember to use the shorter EMCO filter and the cork strips so you have bypass oil available to your engine in case you need it.  Bypass oil flow ... don't leave home without it.


Oldfeller

Every Christmas season they put these super magnets on sale -- this year the discount is a relatively large 15% discount, so if you have any interest in getting the junk iron/steel particles out of your motor oil this would be a good time to try the trick out.

The 15% discount is applied as you check out of the e-store.


http://www.supermagnetman.net/product_info.php?products_id=414

OK, some time has passed and let's see what's what about the magnet trick.  Today's date is 10/21/09 and I have been running a one year oil and filter change interval on Rotella Synthetic oil, 5w40 weight having used this oil for running on most of two years now.

First data bit, the amount of ferrous trash found on magnetic plug and supermagnet has been reduced using the Rotella Syn oil.   This can be interpreted any way you wish, it is just noted here along with empirical pictorial proof.





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Next, what is the effect on the oil filter paper element by running a one year oil change interval?  Is the interval too long and is the filter paper getting overloaded?  Exactly what sort of crap is being caught by the filter paper?

I backflushed the filter by pouring gasoline in through the center hole and letting it backflush out the filter element into a catch bowl.  I let it settle then carefully poured off the gasoline leaving all the solids behind.  I then flushed the gasoline out of the filter by force spraying carb cleaner through the center hole once again backflushing the filter element from the inside out catching it in the same bowl.  What you see are all the solids that came out of the filter (after letting the carb cleaner evaporate).




Now I rubbed the stuff in the bowl, feeling for solids and yes there were some hard solids present.  I sprayed off my finger tip with carb cleaner and rinsed the bowl edges down so all solids were "liquified" in the same small amount of carb cleaner.  I then introduced the edge of the supermagnet to see what was ferrous and what was not.




The vast majority of what the filter paper had caught was more of the same ferrous crap that the magnet had been catching all along.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I was expecting to find more clutch wear or gasket bits or something else non-ferrous.  Amazingly, no aluminum bits were found at all.  Also, there was no mineral grit from dirt or dust (so filter system is working well enough to stop all discernible sized dust particles.

Here is what remains, a tiny flake or two of gasket sealer stuff.




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Tentative Conclusions:

The vast majority of the non-gas, non-carb cleaner soluble materials produced by my engine are ferrous materials.  The super magnet is effective in capturing the majority of these particles with only a small minority becoming engaged with the paper filter element.   Dirt is being stopped by the heavy oil air filter system.

A two year filter exam interval is perhaps appropriate, with oil change to take place yearly as I really can't stomach not changing the oil at least once a year.

Rotella Syn 5w40 oil is working as well or better than Mobil 1 20w50 the previous oil used and pictorially represented by the earlier supermagnet collection pictures upstream in this tread.  

This improvement is highlighted by my "wickerish ways" which started mostly after I quit using the Mobil 20w50 Extended oil, which I dropped because it quit being available with >10 PPM of ZDDP as Mobil changed the oil's formulation without any outside announcements.

Now the filter element, once dryed of all cleaners was examined with a magnifying glass and I found nothing in the pleats, nothing.  I am gonna reuse that little sucker ....

.... yeah, Gort -- I'm a cheap bastard, I know

Low of 3,000 with high of 5,000 -- it varies according to how far it is to whatever work is this particular year.

I ride the Purple People Eater on the longer trips since I've got it, so the Savage gets mostly run around town stop and go, slam and bam for its yearly quota of miles.

I registered originally under the name Oldfeller and then the list upgraded software and sent my new access code to an obsolete email account.  I re-registered and ran as Oldfeller2 for a year or so until Jon recovered the old passwords for a group of us who were caught out in the change.  I then went back to my original name which I use now.  Justin got caught in the same mess as did several others.

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Built into your filter body is a bypass valve (faces you when the filter is installed correctly).  The purpose of the bypass valve is to open when resistance pressure across the paper filter element exceeds the spring value of the bypass valve spring.  Then oil comes in thru the hole as well as going through the paper.

Normal running you don't want the bypass oil pathway used (and it isn't), you want all oil to go thru the filter element (and it does).  

But during very high speed bursts having bypass oil flow means you GET full oil flow even though the filter element cannot supply all of it, some of it comes through the bypass.  Also, should your filter element become "full" or become blocked for some reason, normal running still gets a normal flow of oil through the bypass.

You gotta have a full flow of oil.  Bypass oil flow is your "aw crap" insurance for your engine to keep it alive when things go wrong.  Having seen what interrupted oil flow does to an engine at speed you don't want to NOT have bypass oil flow available.  Symptoms of stopped oil flow would look like this:

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1246336685/0#0

Pretty ugly sounding stuff, huh?

With the supermagnet system as shown, you DO get bypass oil when you need it and the bypass oil has to go around both ends and across the entire face of the magnet so all ferrous materials are trapped before going down the bypass hole.

So, I guess you can say the big magnet gives you full ferrous filtration even on your occasional bypass oil flow -- not a bad thing as almost all of our trash is ferrous.

=============

Wickers, you need the supermagnet trick as you go bypass every time you crank your right hand all the way to the throttle stop.  You also need the best wicking oil found so far, Rotella Synthetic.  Here is a 13,650 mile teardown of the tappets and cam journals of my much abused engine -- Rotella Syn takes good care of me!!

If there was a real issue with wicking oil pressure blowing holes in the filter paper with the large filter, I'd have found it already.  I am a wicker, and a right bad'un too.  Since the bypass valve is still active in this design and the filter paper is not plugged up such pressure build up is not very likely.  

As far as bypass oil flow room, calculate the area for flow that can go past the valve gap when it gets cracked open and you will see the area available for bypass flow to go past the magnet greatly exceeds it.  Or you can calculate the area of the main oil passage and compare it to the bypass area past the magnet.  (the area shown in black at the inner edge of the magnet vs the diameter of the bypass hole in the center or the similar sized oil passage)



But there is a smaller thinner magnet mentioned earlier in the base thread, so use that one if you prefer.   Being both weaker and allowing more distance for flow to go past it at a further distance it will be less effective.  It will allow some more ferrous crap to hit the filter paper, but there is lots & lots of collection room in that filter that is not getting used now anyway so that is no great sin.

During bypass with no magnet the ferrous laden oil does go around again -- but is this fatal?  Nope, remember the point the lady made earlier about the Honda screen & no filter small bikes that have no functional 30 micron filtration at all -- they recirculate all the ferrous stuff big and small up to the size of a fine bug screen all the time.  They survive OK for years and years.

But, you can do better than this with your Savage.

Bouletard, these are the third & 4th types of magnets that I tried -- they are pressed metal and cadmium plated for a reason.  

I originally tried the pressed organics (plastic looking magnets) and found that oil will soften them over time.  Plus the temperature the bike reaches takes them past their Curie point and they lose magnetic field strength.  The plastic looking ceramics are not really suitable for this use.

Make sure you stick with plated hard metal super magnets as you try out your early experiments.

As far as being well thought out -- the list as a whole is a pretty smart critter and things that have been discussed out over a period of time generally turn out pretty good.  

"We" as a whole are a pretty smart inventer/tinkerer.

I looked through his site and it looks as if he no longer has the large ring magnets available any more.

The smaller magnets have an issue, they are not supported by the aluminum cover so when you hit a bump the entire filter will move with the bump (not a good thing).

You would have to go light enough for the spring retaining system for the oil filter to be able to control the filter during bumps, etc.


That would put you back down into this type or class of much thinner magnets.





For more information on selecting a magnet read the original developement thread.

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1175727064/0