Inline turbo oil filter?

[auxilary]

I'm thinking of putting an inline oil filter into the turbo feed line. It's 4an for feed, and who besides earl's (that's the only one I could find on summit) makes an inline oil filter I can install? Is it a good idea?

[Afshin]

I'm not sure how many particles would escape the primary oilf filter (as long as it is a good one) for the second filter to catch it and prevent damage to the turbo bearings.... On the other hand, it is a smaller line and any thing that could potentally drop the oil pressure/flow, leaking fitting, junk getting in the line because of opening and closing it, ....would cause turbo failure. I don't have any real technical info on this, but my instinct would be to stay away from it as I see more room for problems than gains.

[yo2001]

Again,

 

http://www.dragspecialties.com/fatbook/detail.asp?imageID=H7EEX8548E3HEG5FH6BRO5AC#

 

Down to 10 microns. I think it'll small enough.

[yo2001]

If we can get enough poeple, we can group buy these reasonably cheap. I was told I would need to least buy 10 before the price break

[Tony D]

I would be VERY wary of any potential restriction to the turbo oil supply.

If the bypass of the filter was to lift during warmup (for instance) any trash passing through the turbo at idle will not be as damaging as if it was caught up in a filter, restricting oil flow later on during engine operation.

 

OLBERG used to make a pankake screen-type filter, with a tattletale light. The ONLY way I would run a filter onthe turbo oil feed line is if the housing had a provision for a tattletale for delta-p across the filter.

 

A restricted oil filter from any trash in the line will be the same as a coked up feed line starving it for oil when you need it most!

 

Most failures on the stockers are from coked lines not being replaced when the turbo is replaced. Either the hard coke goes into the bearing and scores it longterm, or the thing is so restricted the flow is so reduced that the bearings cook from lack of lube.

 

Being I almost wasted a VW engien putting a filter on a suction line once , I vow I will never do that again. Get a good primary filter that will hold up to the higher delta-p duing cold startup (no bypass valve lifting) and filter all your oil well, regardless, and it will make the secondary filtration unnecessary, IMO.

 

Now a strainer with a larger mesh to keep some catastrophic pieces from landing in there, that might be a different story...

[yo2001]

The unit that I run uses a quarter size meshed filter with alot of passing through area. It'll take 100,000miles of debris before itll clogg the filter element completely. The element can be removed cleaned, also can be replaced every so often.

 

The pressure drop is almost next to nothing also.

 

I have about 10k miles on this setup running 20psi daily. So far so good. I checked the filter element last week and it was still clean.

[auxilary]

I think I'll pass on the filter, afshin has a good point. I've consulted with other rotary guys, they gave same reasoning

[yo2001]

Dropping the oil pressure to the turbo isn't that much problem since the car nowdays have too much oil pressure for the turbo. But I guess if you have filtered oil close from the oil filter, the oil should be clean enough. I now run th eoil from the head (4G63) which can pick up a trash on the way to the oil feed line.

 

Yet 80%-90% of turbo failure is caused by contaminated oil and damage to the journal bearings.