This is a revisit of an old trick that has been posted in the tech section for a while.

(thread is here)    http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1197231468/0#0

Why revisit?

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


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Also, I know some of you have done this trick -- what sort of collection amounts of iron/steel junk did you get on the magnet when you changed your oil filter?  

Has anyone's super magnet weakened to any noticeable degree due to the engine environment?

What sort of filter change intervals have you worked your way up to now?

I can't dispute that a magnet will remove iron or steel particles from oil. Of course it won't get bronze, sand, dirt, or aluminum. But I am curious to know whether the magnet will get anything that the filter would not have gotten. If I had to guess, any particle you can see would never have made it through the filter, so the magnet is getting particles before they ever make it to the filter.

Charon, nope -- somebody else had the exact same objection and if you read the thread and the background threads you will see that the magnet does indeed catch all the little super fine iron stuff that does get by the fine micron paper filter element.

This is a LARGE super magnet that magnetizes all the steel it touches to a very powerful degree -- and that steel can structure that is inside the filter paper gets very heavily magnitized (enough so the far end of the filter will suck a paper clip straight up into the air by a 4 inch jump gap).  

http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1197231468/0#0

Got a picture in there to prove the fine stuff gets caught, too.  

This post refers back to the root discussion post that shows a lot of magnet field strength tricks like holding up the weight of an oil filter on the end of a paper clip that is just touching the far end of the magnetized steel can of the filter the magnet is installed on -- the far end of that one, btw.

You just really don't get much of a flavor as to how strong these magnets are unless you read both of the source posts.

Go talk to Justin o Guy about supermagnetic fields and non-ferrous items like living frogs ....  suffice it to say that supermagnetic fields are not all that particular about what they can attract and some of the rules you think you know about normal strength magnetic fields may not be totally so -- especially when the field is strong and the particle is small.

But then again, you can buy one and prove me wrong too -- I can take it.

I did agree that the magnet would separate iron from oil. I wondered whether it got any iron that the filter missed. Even having read the other thread (which I had read previously) I am not sure of the answer. I think it might be interesting - expensive but interesting - to run spectroscopic oil analysis on samples taken from engines with and without magnets. Since the magnet is not permanently mounted one could use the same machine for both samples, although the required running time between samples might introduce uncontrolled variables. If sample analysis showed consistent differences in the iron levels, and those differences correlated with the presence or absence of the magnet, we might have useful information.

If I were going to design an experiment to test the hypothesis, I might acquire two small oil-filter-equipped engines, equip one with a magnet in its oil system, run them under as near identical conditions and loads as possible, and compare results. I would then move the magnet from one to the other and repeat.

Perhaps the most important question: Does it matter? Millions of vehicles have run incredibly long distances without magnets in their oil systems. The cost of adding a magnet, at the manufacturing level, is pretty low. The cost of adding a magnet to an oil filter, again at the manufacturing level, is low. Yet I cannot recall ever having seen an oil filter advertised as containing a magnet (and sold at a premium). I can only conclude it doesn't make any significant difference.

The wee fine particles that got stopped and are attached to the center perforated steel section of the filter (by the little holes down inside the oil filter) are by definition "particles that got by the filter element" -- how else did they get there?  





For $14 less a 15% discount you can do whatever experiments you want to do, or -- having actually done it and having seen the stuff collected on the steel filter can and having had to scrub all the collected crap off the magnet you will know 1) it works and 2) be amazed at how much fine stuff circulates around in your oil all year long.

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People amaze me sometimes -- some folks in motorcycle land are paying over $20 per oil change to get the very very best synthetic oil they can buy, paying $17 for oil plugs with a little magnet on the tip end of it and paying $50 each year to have their used oil studied by an oil lab and get a lab tech report on the wear by-products running around in their oil "to see what's going on in my motor".

Heck folks, buy a gallon of good relatively cheap Rotella synthetic oil (with the tappet and cam chain diesel additives that you do need for our bikes), buy an oil filter each year, slap the magnet on it and put the filter in for a year while you change out that gallon's worth of of oil in several installments.

At the end of the year, pull the magnet off the oil filter, wipe it off (be amazed at all the crap it stopped) and do 'er again next year.

Your yearly cost of excellent internal preventive maintenance will be the same or less as some folks are paying FOR A SINGLE OIL CHANGE ...

And use the $50 bucks you don't pay for the yearly oil analysis to take your wife out to dinner someplace nice .... she'll appreciate it.

As powerful as these magnets supposedly are I wonder if this can act as a double "mod" with the magnet helping to set off stubborn traffic lights. Anyone know?