FormerH22a4

Okay, I've been reading a bit on the oil forum and I have a theory a potential explaination of the #4 cycl. problems.

What oil filter did these engines have?

Well, with our high reving engines, an oil filter with high flow characteristics is essential. Below is an excerpt that might make more sense.

" When we're talking about oil flow and which filters do best with this, I think it's important to talk about what oil they were used with.

Petroleum oils which tend to sludge up with hot engines will cause high performance filtering units like Mobil 1 to become plugged up sooner than if a synthetic is used.

Other factors to consider include the engine and driving habits of the user. High and fast-revving engines cause a lot of problems when a large amount of oil is suddenly sent to the filter. This may cause the separation between pleats to be lost substantially increasing backpressure. Also the bypass valve may not flow sufficient oil under such conditions and lead to oil starvation.

In general, petroleum users should use "lower" quality filters. That is, ones that don't filter down to say 15-20 microns. They catch more sludge than solid particles. The Mobil 1 filter should only be used by synthetic users as a general rule IMO."


Did people use dino oil with the high filtering mobil 1 oil filter?

Chazmo

Good question / thought, Former, but I don't know if that info's available. Besides, I'll bet a good percentage of the engines were running synthetic at the time they went.

Another good question would be whether the damage is cumulative or happens all at once.

I don't think anyone knows, but I'll be interested to read the replies here.

Barry in Wyoming

I bet most of the engines were running stock oil filters and petroleum based oil. Here's the mileage at failure for the 36 I've tracked so far.

1. 7450 miles
2. 3200 miles
3. 2200 miles
4. 6000 miles
5. 650 miles
6. 2800 miles
7. 2900 miles
8. 6651 miles
9. 2000 miles
10. 3500 miles
11. 4000 miles
12. ? miles
13. 1400 miles
14. 3000 miles
15. 6900 miles
16. 5000 miles
17. ? miles
18. 6500 miles
19. 11300 miles
20. 29,000 miles
21. 5000 miles
22. 19,000 miles
23. 27,000 miles
24. 11,500 miles
25. ? miles
26. 19,000 miles
27. 14,700 miles
28. ? miles
29. no car, no failure (my error.this number skipped)
30. ?miles
31. 16,000 miles
32. 50,000 miles
33. 8,000 miles
34. ? miles
35. 20,000 miles
36. 11200 miles
37. 2500 miles

Chazmo

I stand (sit) corrected! Given the mileage numbers, and youth of most of the engines, I'll agree with Barry. Probably most were still on dino and orig. filter. Not all, though (I'll bet).

FormerH22a4

Possibly 18 out of 37 would have had an oil change. Now the question is which oil and which filter were they using?

In any case, with the nature of our engines being high heat efficient burn, high rev and vtec oil pressure bursts, it favours the high flow oil filters. Very efficient particle filtering <15 microns wouldn't flow as well and might cause some starvation.

The Mobil 1 filter is a high efficient filtering oil filter and the K&N is a high flowing filter. Being one or the other, there are trade offs but with the tight tolerances of today's engine and good quality synthetic oil, good filtering and high flow is better than extreme filtering and less flow.

Barry in Wyoming

That's why, for this car and engine, I will have a Honda dealer do every oil change with a Honda filter, at least until my warranty runs out.

ninegrand

So, will using the Mobil 1 filter be harmful??

FormerH22a4

ninegrand, it might be harmful if you use dino oil and have extended drain intervals. The dino oil will sludge and the Mobil will clog up fast.

The other half of #4 cyc problem happened early on. This early stage is when the car consumes the most oil. Now, could it be that most of these instances resulted from low oil?