I see what you are saying. To say the only real benefit of bypass oil filtration is only extend the life of the oil is incorrect. That is only the gravy. Your real meat and potatoes is the decrease in wear on your engine components and increase in engine life.

As far as bypasses decreasing oil pressure, I'm not sure about the Amsoil one, but ours does not. Our filter is so dense, the line you tee into makes it like a wall and will maintain the oil pressure because of this.

More on the topic of constant RPM. I still disagree with you. The drilling rig does not sit at idle. And just locally here, a major excavating company, Rodman, has gone fleet-wide with KleenOil. Their "over-the-road" trucks are mainly just city driving. This is only one example.

I can go on with more factual information, but like you said I dont want to bring it off topic as well.

To the OP, the truth is, any bypass filtration is better than none at all. I would take what slipstream said about sticking with the oem full-flow filter because it is specifically designed for the s2000. If you were to opt for a KleenOil system, you can safely (through oil analysis) take your engine oil drains out to around a year or more. Of course you don't have to, but you for sure can without any damage what so ever.

What a lot of bypass filtration can't do is keep the water out of the system. With the kleenoil filter, you are also keeping 100% of the water out of the oil produced by normal condensation, which prevents sulfuric acid being produced when that water and sulfer mix.

Anyway, as you can see, I really love what we have to offer, I can go on and on.

But, in short, stick with the oem filter or find a by-pass filtration system that you like best.

 

Your statement is incorrect. I looked up the KleenOil system, and this system definitely takes a portion of the oil coming from the oil pump, filters it and dumps it into the oil pan without circulating through the engine. This loss in oil flow through the engine does reduce oil pressure in your system.

The Amsoil BMK-13 system does not do this. All of the oil coming from the oil pump goes back into the oil filter port and through the engine, and none of it gets bypassed to the oil pan. Only if the backpressure to the pump exceeds its pressure relief setting will any oil flow be reduced.

The KleenOil system works just like an OilGuard or Frantz bypass filter.

 

Numbers four and five being gun control and X-braces....

 

You are putting a lot of faith into those UOAs. Your oil may be doing fine, but is your engine?

UOA is very much a time-averaged effect, whereas engine wear can happen very suddenly over very short periods of time. UOA is not the proper way to measure whether your engine is getting enough oil at peak power conditions, unless you happen to run at nothing but peak power conditions.

It's also a trailing measurement, meaning that by the time it shows anything, the damage has already been done.

 

How can you say that our system does or does not lose oil pressure without touching one? I did not make the assumption that Amsoil does or does not lose pressure because I have not had personal experience with your system.

Aside from seeing it first hand, I'll take word from my head installer who installs over 10 a day, and can build ls1's from the ground up, cages, ect ect about oil pressure loss.

Maybe the fact that we top up the oil to compensate for the oil being filtered (less than a quart) makes a difference in this non existent loss of oil pressure.

 

On the mark Mike. An extension of this point is the fact that an ultra-fine aftermarket filtration system can and will mask engine wear (as indicated by UOA) - because the wear metals/indicators get trapped in the bypass filter (if the filter system is working properly)! In fact, I would be concerned if my car showed anything above a trace amount of wear metals while using a bypass filter system. A bypass filter should trap nearly all wear metals, and even "normal" wear metal levels may indicate a level of accelerated wear - at a rate the bypass system is unable to filter. This would concern me.

It's a double edged sword with the S2000: you want your filter system to remove as many contaminants as possible - but at the same time an aftermarket filtration system may limit/inhibit oil flow at critical times (high RPMs) and therefore increase wear - and then remove any evidence of that increased wear...
It's a difficult engineering balancing act - filtration vs oil flow/pressure.

That whole thought-set is why I didn't use a bypass system on my S2000.
My Civic VX? No problem - it has a much narrower RPM range and won't be impacted by the possible pitfalls the S2000's engine can suffer - due to the fact the little Civic doesn't operate so close to the razor's edge.
The S2000's engine is an example of engineering extremes - where small variations at critical times can cause big problems. Small variations in my Civic have little to no impact on it's operation - even at redline. There's just a lot more room for error in your average car/truck/SUV.

 

I change mine whenever I change my motor oil. So every 3000 to 3500 miles my S gets a new one. They are cheep anyway.

 

Get a decently good oil filter and a decently good oil and change it at every 3000 miles.

Do you really want to try and filter all the mess your car would go through in a 15k interval with ONE filter? lol...

 

slipstream444 Posted: Mar 30 2008, 08:40 AM
No offence, but where is the data to comfirm this?
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for the OEM S2000 filter for the reasons you mention but I've never seen any data (here or elsewhere) that shows this bypass pressure in a test or something.

mikegarrison Posted: Mar 31 2008, 05:13 PM
What other method is there?
Leak down & compression every 3k miles?
Drop the sump every 3k miles?
Even state-of-the-art oil pressure & temp gauges don't show how much oil flow there is.

UOA's are pretty simple and available tools to roughly see how your engine deals with the oil you're using and how the oil is holding up and when one's using the same oil in the same engine it creates a trend.
If you have engine failure due to your oil.... there probably wasn't enough oil in your engine

And in general.. 3k miles oil change interval is pretty outdated.
Its 2008 you know, not 1975

 

I tried to find the link - it's an old one with Road Rage I believe. Someone made the point the S2000's filter didn't bypass oil until around 120psi, and someone came back with a number closer to 100 psi.

A number of recent posts failed to understand there has been two types of filtration covered here. The OP posted a question regarding an Amsoil FULL FLOW filter (aftermarket replacement for the OEM filter) which spurred a discussion about BYPASS filtration (an external setup - in addition to full flow filtration - that slowly filters engine oil at a slower rate, but much more finely).

There are a lot of aftermarket FULL FLOW filters that are very good. Amsoil, Mobil 1, Pure 1 are all good examples of high quality aftermarket full flow filters. The problem with those filters is they are designed with a "one size fits all" mentality. That's okay for most cars - but not okay for the S2000. We all know the PCX filter is specifically designed for the S2000. Honda, like all automotive companies is good at designing cars that borrow from other models in production. This includes oil filtration. Take a look at how many cars in the Honda lineup that use the same filter - and how many years that's been going on. The S2000 is the only car in the Honda line that uses the PCX filter, and oil pressure and a higher bypass threshold are the main reasons for it. If it was a marketing gimick - Honda would have charged a lot more money for the PCX filter for the trouble of production. However, the PCX filter costs about the same as other OEM Honda filters. I buy mine in bulk and save a few bucks. It's just not worth screwing around with - there's no benefit to any of the alternatives - only the possibility of hurting your car. Use one of the primary tests of Risk Management: do the benefits outway the associated risks? The answer is an easy NO.

As for UOA: Mike is not in any way wrong in what he posted. It is a trailing indicator - as are many indicators of wear or mechanical problems. If you're using the OEM filter and a good quality oil - UOA provides a good indicator of engine wear. If you're using bypass filtration - you may not get a reliable indication of wear due to the fact the bypass fitration system by its very nature filters out a lot of the evidence. In that case - the UOA gives you a good indication of the condition of your oil.

Spitfire is right: under normal use, oil changes at 3000 miles is a waste of money and natural resources. I used to be part of the 3000 mile oil change club until UOA continually told me that I was wasting money (and natural resources) by changing my oil that frequently. It still tells me that at 5000 mile intervals as well - but with a much smaller margin. A good quality synthetic will last well in excess of 5000 miles and an OEM filter is designed to last up to the manufacturer's recommended interval. Unless you're racing your car or puting 3000 or less miles on your car a year, 3000 mile change interval is wasteful and provides no wear savings over longer intervals. If your car sees only a few miles a year, your interval should be based on 1 year and not on mileage.