Either I'm not using the right key words or I'm just not looking in the right place so I'm posting. I've got a 51 shoebox, stock 8ba with stock oil bath air cleaner and stock oil filter. I'm wanting to eliminate the oil filter because all my reading on here has said that it only filters about 10% of the oil to begin with and by changing your oil every 1-3k miles you should be fine. My questions are: If I remove the filter to I just tie the supply/return lines together or cap them off? What is the best oil to run in a bone stock 8ba, with roughly 63k original miles on it? I've heard everything from synthetic to syn-blend to 40W. Detergent or non detergent? I know these are basic questions but I've read 20 threads and gotten 20 different answers so just trying to see what the best thing is for my particular motor....
Keep the oil filter. It does filter all the oil, just not all at once. The oil will remain noticeably cleaner with the filter. Engine wear will be reduced by half. On the plus side, it is a more effective filter than the full flow in that it filters finer and removes smaller particles of dirt and sludge than full flow filters. Chances are it has never had anything but 10W30. That was the default choice at garages from the fifties through the eighties. Check your oil pressure. It should be 57PSI @ 40 MPH. Factory spec for a new motor. 15 or 20 hot, idling. If pressure is very much below that you could go up to 15W40.
I don’t know how true it is but iv seen it said many times. You don’t want to start using modern detergent oil in an old motor that’s had non detergent …. It will break lose sludge deposits and clog things up. So id say if you suspect or know it had been run all them miles w non … Id stay w non detergent and ad some zinc additive. You can simply plug where the lines were.
All the literature I've seen about detergent oil does not suggest the oil "cleans" the engine but rather that it keeps contaminants in suspension to be filtered out which is exactly what your old-style filter does best. I'd go with the filter and 10W30 Detergent oil of your favorite brand.
Might have been true in 1955 if we were talking about a 1910 car. Detergent oil was introduced in 1951. All car makers recommended it except Volkswagen. Practically all cars made since 1951, have used nothing else their whole lives. I worked in a gas station in the sixties and HD, 10W30 was the default choice for all oil changes. We kept non detergent oil in stock but nobody bought it except for a few cheapskates driving oil burning refugees from the junkyard. So, if your car was made after WW2 and was on the road in the fifties or any time since, it probably has detergent oil in the crankcase. As far as the filter goes, the filter elements are still available. They don't cost any more than any other filter and are not hard to change. They last at least 5000 miles. They protect your motor from dirt and wear. Why would you want to take it off?
As far as I know, the engine has never been rebuilt and judging by the looks of it I'm inclined to agree. To be honest I was going to eliminate the filter strictly for the fact that most of what I've read on here says it does little if no filtering and it would look a little cleaner under the hood. I'll replace the filter, most likely run standard 10W30 until I can install an oil pressure gauge, and go from there. Would running synthetic or syn blend have any benefit? What about a high mileage oil? I'm asking based on knowing nothing about what was put in there by the PO, but I am trying to find out....
I,m running a 8ba with no filter just plug bottom one them off,I run my oil pressure direct to gauge from top of engine. My engine is clean but have non dregerent oil to use up. If engine is orginial i,d stay with non dergerent. Best drop the pan and clean out.
It's a bypass filter, meaning that it only handles a portion of the flow from the oil pump. A filter is still a filter, even if only 20% of the oil volume flows through it, eventually all of the oil passes through it and anything it intercepts is a good thing. It's not like there's a separation between the stuff that gets filtered and the stuff that doesn't, it just doesn't get filtered all at once. By the way, the popular "full flow" filter modifications can cause problems because if your filter clogs then you have zero flow. Most modern automobile motor oils have stopped adding zinc to their formulas. There's a variety of opinion whether your older engine benefits from the zinc additive. I believe the zinc helps. Synthetics don't have zinc, and I hear that synthetic oils have a tendency to leak more from an old engine's tired seals and gaskets.
Straight weight 30 or 40 non-detergent, block the filter off if you want, make sure you dont over fill it and change it regularly....done.
Well, I'm apparently in the minority here, but I'd remove the filter, if you want to, and never look back. All this stuff about how it eventually filters all the oil may be true. But, since most everyone agrees that it only filters from 10 to 20% at any one time (a figure I think is grossly high, by the way) that means, using those figures, that 80 to 90% of the oil is passing through with whatever dirt is in it, right on through the bearings, etc, while it waits it's turn to go through the filter. For my money, partial flow filters are barely worth their scrap value. In my opinion, frequent oil changes will do more for the engine than those 'lumps' hanging on the engine. On the other hand, they certainly don't do any harm either............... If you choose to remove it you can just put a pipe plugs in place of the hoses/lines at the engine ports. Ray
Ya ok... the engineers who designed the car just put the filter on for fun, it doesn't do anything. Also all the car companies who recommended detergent oil for the last 60 years were wrong. Amazing what you can learn on the internet. Seriously, any good brand of oil will be fine. On a flathead engine you do not need to worry about zinc because, it has a lightly loaded valve train like a modern OHC engine. If you want to, you can use Rotella 15W40 but it won't do anything for your motor. Synthetic, a waste of money on a motor that old. If you can take the pan off and scrape out the crud it would be a good thing.
I would submit that most oil filters on production automobiles were offered as accessories, either at the factory or at the dealership. Their promotion was based on a perceived benefit that may well have exceeded their actual benefit and were a businessman's attempt to make a customer happy and a profit in the bargain. I would concede that with the amount of unpaved roads common to the US, even as late as the '60s, and the attendant dust, there may have been some incremental improvement, though a super duty air filter would have been more benficial than a partial flow oil filter. Further, the pre-closed PCV system allowed that same dirty air into the crankcase via the joke for a filter "breather cap" with the horse hair inside that just got oiled a little to trap the passing clods. So, what I am saying is, conditions 'back in the day' being what they were, any incremental improvement may have been beneficial, however slight, but in today operating environment, not so much. However, I do fully agree with Rusty O'Toole about removing the pan and cleaning the sludge out. If this engine hasn't been opened in a very long time, you will be amazed what is in there. Ray
The Jalopy Journal
