This is another one of those posts that may seem to make little sense.
Regular readers will know that I have an engineering background, and also that I like motorcycles and amongst other things own a twinkie harley. –>
So again on one of the forums one of the endless four topics comes up.
In case you don’t know, they are;
- Tyres
- Brake pads
- Oil
- Filters
So today it was filters, and I will tell anyone that asks or will listen that I have an engineering background and own my own twinkie outright and I will only use the genuine HD oil filter because it is the only one that mentions particle size (5 micron) and the construction quality is very good (internal structural integrity etc) and the only oil I will use is Mobil 1, and I know that neither of these options are the cheapest, I go with them because I believe, personally, that they are the best.
So we get all the usual and all the usual anecdotes and like someone mentioning nazi’s in a politics thread, it’s only a matter of time before someone links to someone who has cut oil filters open.
So now someone with a dremel is suddenly qualified via the MkI eyeball to look at the filter media and tell you all the relevant physical properties, what material it is made from, what the porosity is, what the particulate filtering is, what the carrying capacity is, and so on and so forth… I don’t fucking think so, so they talk about how many pleats there are or whether the spring is coil or leaf, and of course like all assholes everywhere, they have an opinion on this.
*MY* opinion is worthless to them, I must listen to their opinion, as though it has equal weight.
They’ll quote SAE certification and test numbers, not understanding that even the most stringent one for automotive lube oil filters allows the passage of 60 micron particles, and the 5 to 20 micron range is the most damaging to an engine…. The weaker test standard only does one pass, not even circulatory full flow.
They’ll talk about the colour the outside is painted, they’ll talk about being “approved for use” with HD, they’ll talk about the “high performance” label on the box, they’ll talk about what the local mechanic or auto shop sells (whatever makes a profit) they’ll talk about ease of fitment and removal (just buy a fucking proper filter tool / strap or stick a fucking screwdriver through it if you don’t want to analyse it) but the one thing they will *NOT* talk about is why someone like me with an engineering background who owns his own twinkie outright but ain’t made of money so does want it to last, only ever uses OEM HD 5 micron oil filters and Mobil 1 oil.
Interesting, because while they all own HD’s, 99.99% of them either do NOT have an engineering background, or do, and run bike repair / tuning businesses, and the customer is always right if you want them to open their wallet… yes sir, K&N Chrome body oil filters *rock*… they even have this neat nut so you can remove them..
Now, we do have to be scientific about this, create a forum for owners of jiggawatt flux capacitors and most of what you read will be people customising them, or tuning them, or fixing them, or asking what’s wrong with them, you don’t hear shit from the guys getting 100,000 trouble free miles out of them.
But, back to oil filters, a 2.5 micron filter will make the oil look clean again, a 1 micron filter will even take out the additives in some NEW oils like zinc and detergents.
In fact a good “deep flow” (auto filters are surface media) 1 micron filter will even remove stuff like some bacteria, red blood cells, pollen, flour, talc, spores etc, but, it will still pass stuff like viruses, sugar molecule, metal ions, dyes, clays, and of course water molecules….
Reverse osmosis (either high pressure or gravity fed) is only so easy because water is so small, almost everything else is larger so easier to filter out.
A *good* human eye unaided in good light can see down to around 40 micron.
And of course the “old” oil filter pulled at filter and oil change day is an excellent historical record of what has been going on since the last change, but that is of course just thrown in the bin… even the ones who send oil samples off for lab analysis *never* send filter samples from the same motor/change interval…
Which brings us to the caveat that I always end my 2 line advice with, which is that this is what I choose to run in my motor, you must make your own choices.
So what have we learned?
1/ The forum is only a subset of the whole.
2/ The silent majority probably get the fluids and filters changed (or not, just billed for it) at a mechanics, so they have no idea what they run.
3/ The forum subset who apparently care enough to post and read about it, don’t care enough to educate themselves, and seem to like some sort of status quo where one choice is probably as good as any other, and even if it isn’t, the differences aren’t significant.
One comment I often make that gets flatly ignored, <crickets> is why oh why oh why oh why do not everyone, mechanics ESPECIALLY, get out a sharpie / permanent marker and write the date and odometer reading on the new filter before fitting it?
Never had a single response to that.
Ever.
Tells you something.
Now I’m back with Carl Sagan and what happens when you have a society founded on science and technology, when nobody within that society knows anything about science and technology.
Well, one answer is they go on forums and argue about redline shockproof and K&N vs Wix vs Purolator but none of them use any science or technology to back up their arguments…
Another answer is they want unicorns shitting rainbows with everything, which is why today a customer has come back to me for the third time, asking the exact same question, yet expressed in different terms, hoping for a different answer than the one they got the last twice.
Which is why I attempt, and fail, tonight to explain to someone that when an 11 year old girl is being victimised by her friends at school, it’s no good saying they are not friends and man up bitch we all had to put up with it at school.
A friend is a social (media) contact nowadays, and thanks to science and technology they are in touch and present and exerting an influence 24/7, not just during school hours, so while the UK still has relatively low rates for child suicides, there is a fuckton of self-harming baahaviour out there, and a quintuple fuckton of “alternative anaesthesia” to temporarily make the pain go away such as drugs and alcohol abuse…
Our survey said……
In 2014, 15% of pupils had ever taken
drugs, 10% had taken drugs in the last
year and 6% had taken drugs in the last
month
So in your average class of 30 kids 4.5 have taken drugs, 3 have taken drugs in the last year, and 1.8 have taken drugs in the last month.
So basically 2 kids in every class are regular drug users, and probably another 10 are on prescription drugs for ADHD or some such shit.
Meanwhile the kids are at the stage where by the time you are 12 years old in your first year of senior school, you need to be seen as a young adult, hip, trendy, with it, and so they are all demanding iPhone 7s, I shit you not… little cunts aren’t even legally allowed to go out and do a paper round and earn money for themselves, but an iPhone 7 and associated contract is a must have.
It’s that “social” “friend” “contact” thing again.
Without it, you ain’t shit.
Which is *kinda* where I came in with this post, raises hand, ooooh please, tell me what all the rest of the coolest of the gang are using for oil filters this week, cos I just gotsa fit in with y’all, other wise everyone will unfriend me on fuckbook like the fucking luser I am…
doesn’t matter how thin you slice it or how deep you dig, all the way down it all turtles and herd mentality.
I used to go over to the natural building section of the website over at permies.com and learn a lot, particularly from a poster called Jay C. White Cloud, a timberwright who I think had it in the family in addition to learning from Amish and Japanese master timberwrights, and he could and did go on for pages why natural materials, put together the right way, were actually better than modern materials. Knew a lot about pest abatement too, which helps when you are planning a house, and also how to word things when you are talking to a building code guy so you could get it past him. Stuff like look at rubble trench, podium, stone foundations for Japanese Minka farm houses that have literally lasted centuries, in maximally seismic Japan, and you want a concrete slab?
Another dude, who went by Terry Ruth, who would interact with the woolly thoughts and hopes of the hippie builders, and say why this or that would not work, and why you had to test soils and wear hard hats and I kind of liked learning from him too because he was, surprise, and actual structural engineer.
Those two are long gone now. Got called too bossy, too know it all, too often telling people that their “new” idea or technology either wasn’t new or would end up with the roof on top of them in the middle of the night probably.
You could almost hear these patient guys, sighing behind the screen, as they were shouted down over and over, by the newbies who knew.
It was fun while it lasted.
Comment by d. beguiled — March 18, 2017 @ 10:09 pm
My dad taught me to keep a notebook in the glove compartment, and write down every bit of maintenance done on the vehicle. Thanks, Dad!
Mobil 1 oil filters are the best for cars IMHO, although I’ve been leaning towards Valvoline Synpower oil lately, the Civic seems to like it better. Advances in lubrication are a big part of why modern car engines can last longer than the car engines of my youth.
Comment by tweell — March 21, 2017 @ 2:20 am