Brand New Blocked Oil Filter?

[Weegie]

Just had a weird experience

I drained the engine oil a few weeks back and a few days back got around to putting a fresh fill of oil and a new filter into the Sporti a few days back. That's nothing new, I've left the bike without fresh oil in it for longer and never had any problems when refilling with fresh oil.

I always prefill the oil filter with fresh oil as well.

After a fresh fill I disable the fuel pump remove the plugs (it also gives me a chance to check them) and turn the bike over on the starter until I establish pressure. Maybe a bit OTT but my logic is the bigends will not be loaded as much if not having compression loads on them until I'm sure everything is getting fed with oil.

This time I turned the engine over on short cycles and it just wouldn't establish pressure, perhaps 20 short cycles nothing. I knew for sure this was the case as the oil pressure light was coming on immediatley after stopping the turns on the starter and the gauge wasn't reading pressure either (as I recall when turning the engine on the starter the oil pressure light is disabled).

Drained the new oil last night, dropped the sump and pulled the filter to check, everything was as it should be, filter O ring was in place, filter tight and everything in the sump was it should be.

When I upturned the filter it was extremely slow to empty. I had a gauze rewashable filter to hand I installed that. I know these aren't as good as paper filters, that's why I stopped using it, but as it was the only thing to hand I prefilled and installed it.

Just went through another cycle of turning the engine over on the starter and after the 3rd short cycle, up came the pressure, that's normally what I'd expect when doing this.

I'll leave the gauze filter in this year and go back to a normal paper filter cartdridge next year. Never came across this behaviour before and wonder was the brand new paper filter blocked? Can't think of anything else as it was the only thing changed.

The filter was a Mahle OC1314 I've been using that brand for several years and never had a problem.

Be interested if better brains than mine have any ideas or if anybody has heard of anything similar.

Edited December 27, 2024 by Weegie

[gstallons]

IDK what happened in your case . i usually shut it off hot and go to it. I don't like to leave the oil drain for a long time. Do inspect the filter you remove and inspect the mating surface where the filter goes to make sure everything is all clear . Also look at the filter you are installing to verify there is  seal/gasket going back on.

 If you want to keep up your habit , remove the oil press. switch and plumb in a hose so you can purge the air and see when it primes . Do mount the end of the hose so oil will not go everywhere when it primes. Shut it off and reinstall the switch . 

[Pressureangle]

Suspicious, but it could be that your pump simply lost it's prime, and you swapped filters just before it caught on.

I'd cut the paper filter open and inspect the guts just to have peace of mind.

[Weegie]

1 hour ago, gstallons said:

IDK what happened in your case . i usually shut it off hot and go to it. I don't like to leave the oil drain for a long time. Do inspect the filter you remove and inspect the mating surface where the filter goes to make sure everything is all clear . Also look at the filter you are installing to verify there is  seal/gasket going back on.

 If you want to keep up your habit , remove the oil press. switch and plumb in a hose so you can purge the air and see when it primes . Do mount the end of the hose so oil will not go everywhere when it primes. Shut it off and reinstall the switch . 

I didn't insepct the filter. When filling the filter I thought it took longer than normal for the oil to penetrate the media and fill the outer periphery. On removal tilting the filter oil in the centre was slow to percolate through to the outer. Thinking about it, it probably wasn't blocked but the media seemed denser and fluid slower to penetrate it than normal

The sealing ring was fine both sides, as I removed it to check.

I've more or less got what you suggest, its piped to a pressure gauge, if the gauge is correct you wouldn't want an open ended hose when it primes it gets up to 20psi almost immediatley and 60 in a few seconds.

1 hour ago, Pressureangle said:

Suspicious, but it could be that your pump simply lost it's prime, and you swapped filters just before it caught on.

I'd cut the paper filter open and inspect the guts just to have peace of mind.

I can't rule that out, but inclined to disbelieve it. After god knows how many times turning the engine over and nothing the pressure gauge never flickered off the stop. Installed another filter and 3 short turns on the starter and BOOM! system pressure, which is exactly what I'd normally expect when re-priming the system.

Now if it had been the HiCam then perhaps............................

I purchased 3 of these filters and next on the list to check is the HiCam engined bike. If it doesn't prime as expected, I'll have a good idea what to do next, either way I'm going to find out

Re the filter its in the trash so I could fish it out and cut it open, but it'll be horrible as it's saturated in oil. If I get the time I'll do that.

Nobody is more surprised than me, if somebody had posted this up, I'd have found it difficult to believe, I wasn't even going to start this thread. Did so in the off chance that something similar happened to somebody else.

The scary thing is if I wasn't so bloody anal, I'd have filled it, started it and perhaps seriously damaged the engine.

[Lucky Phil]

No definitive answer from me John but one thing is I never leave an engine without oil in it mid oil change. Dump the oil change the filter refill and start asap. Even if the filter media was an issue the pressure relief valve in the filter would open and build oil pressure. Your pump just lost prime I suspect and starter cranking wasn't enough rotational speed to re prime it. There is far too much anxiety about engine oil pressure in general and LOP in particular. I've seen race engine data logging where the engine oil pressure goes to zero hard on the brakes into the hairpin at 9000rpm lap after lap and it didn't hurt the bigends. The shallow sump engine issues were always an acceleration over LOP issue. So hard acceleration at maximum engine load without oil pressure, probably repeatedly as the LOP light is hard to notice in daylight when you're gunning it down some suburban street or back road. I'm sure the big block Guzzi can tolerate zero oil pressure for quite a while at idle speeds building oil pressure after an oil change like 99% of engines without any issue. When it comes to pre charging the filter I'm not even sure that with regards to pump priming it's a good thing to be honest with you. If the pump happens to be on the on the edge of losing it's prime for some reason then having the filter full of oil won't help it's cause at all and just make priming the pump harder as it now has a resistance to overcome on the outlet side as well as trying to suck on the inlet side. I still prime filters when I can but then again I don't leave engines without oil during oil changes. Some engines you simply can't prime the filter as we all know due to the instillation and they never have any issues due to it. 

As for filling the filter observations, well it's amazing the fine details you would otherwise not notice or think about that are pretty normal until you have an issue and then the mind starts asking detailed questions you never even considered before. Mind games John mind games, don't worry. Occams Razor says..... pump lost it's prime. 

Phil

 

Edited December 27, 2024 by Lucky Phil

[gstallons]

• I like your last sentence !

[po18guy]

This fellow dissects oil filters on a weekly basis. Some filters have stamped louvers in the core and he has opened some new filters in which the louvers were improperly stamped and thus only partially open. This would certainly greatly restrict oil flow.

 

Edited December 28, 2024 by po18guy

[gstallons]

Mmmm. post the video of him opening the oil filter(s) please . 

[pete roper]

Opening a spin on filter is really easy. Just use an old school, (Only type I possess.) can opener, (As that’s basically what the filter is, a can for the filtering medium.) whizz the flange off, lift off the ‘Dome’ of the container and ‘Voila’! There is the filtering medium. You can also see and work out how the bypass system works which for a lot of people is an eye, rather than can, opener! (F’nar, F’nar! I slay myself sometimes!)

[gstallons]

I worked for this "Helen Reddy" and was instructed to open an oil filter so they could examine the contents of an oil filter . I was required to use a "whizzer" or air powered cutoff tool to disassemble . I told said boss that using that tool would mess up everything leaving grinder mess everywhere . Boss told me they could ignore  all the debris and still make a good evaluation.  

[Weegie]

Guess I'll never really know unless I open it, even then, unless it was glaringly obvious, I'd doubt I'd know the difference, so I'll proabably not bother

My own experience is the 2 v/v bikes prime easier than the HiCam.

I'll take Phil's and gstallons advice in future.

Just primed the HiCam and all was normal there, a few short turns 3-4 seconds each time on the starter and the pressure built up as normal (same filter type and ordered at the same time from the same vendor)

Of course it could be coincidence that the system primed on the Sporti after I changed the filter, I'm not wholly convinced. That said it's not the first time I've been wrong and then there is Occam's Razor too.

It also may have been that particular filter offered a little too much resistance, a relatively small pressure drop upstream of the pump would probably be enough to stop the system priming

Thank you to everybody who responded your thoughts on the topic were much appreciated

John

[po18guy]

10 hours ago, gstallons said:

Mmmm. post the video of him opening the oil filter(s) please . 

Here it is:

 

[guzzler]

Another example of piss poor quality control.....

Unfortunately, with potentially catastrophic repercussions!

[po18guy]

I note that Hiflofiltro has gotten good reviews from his channel, based on construction and materials, particularly filtering media.

[Lucky Phil]

I saw nothing to suggest the filter was faulty in that video. The openings were open and would pass oil and the holes are unlikely to get "clogged" as he mentioned as the oil is cleaned by the filter media before it reaches the holes. You simply can't make assumptions like this unless you actually run a flow test on the filter itself and measure the flow rate and pressure differential across the filter. Branded filters can be made by different companies and Champion make quite a few brands I recall. So it may simply be supplier detail variations. Just because the inner ring holes are smaller on one filter than another doesn't mean they are "too small" or not big enough. The other filter holes may be oversize to requirements. Thats why a flow test is the only real way to tell.

Phil

Edited December 29, 2024 by Lucky Phil