Thread: Filtermag - Does it Work or is it Snake Oil?

I read an interesting short article on this subject about a month ago.
It was by a journo who did his own experiments with the filter mag including sticking his own home made magnets to a filter.
The conslusion he came up with was he was surprised at how much fine particles that were collected by the "filtermag" and was far more superior to his own "homemade" magnets. The journo thought that the "filtermag" was cheap insurance, and the less metal fillings, no matter how small, floating around in the oil aught to be a good thing.
It would be very hard, I would think, to actuallyfield test and determine if the filter magnets made any long term difference to the longevity of an engine.

Originally Posted by Dougal

I'm not sure who fed you that line, but it's very wrong.

With the right maintenance a car can be made to last longer than the owner. In that time you can expect to replace every sliding and rolling surface many times. The use of "composites" (nice buzz word that means nothing) will not change that at all since most rolling bearings are (and will remain) steel.

Steel is approx $1400 per ton right now, there is no composite with anywhere near the stiffness of steel available anywhere near that price.

The sliding surfaces that can be made from low wearing, self lubricating materials already are. The ones in the more extreme environments (cylinder bores, crank journals etc) have to be harder for obvious reasons. These parts are cheap to buy and straightforward to replace or resurface.

The part I really admire about landrovers was the design with service in mind. Everything that needs replaced can be quite easily. With the right maintenance a million km should be possible.

Well you just keep believing that if it makes you feel safe. No offence but there are many products we see get used in the mining and marine industry that are very cheap and in a domestic situation would make parts/panels etc last a lot longer. There are alloys, super lloys, stainless steel, corrosion inhibitors and coatings for a start. Then there is quality. 2 bearings side by side can look identical, 1 will last 50,000kms and the other will last 500,000kms. Look at the old Patrol diffs (light truck diffs), if you could not get 500,000 plus out of them, now look at the crap diffs they put in.Everything will wear given time and if certain parts become mass produced then the cost would fall. You are entitled to your opinion and I mine, there is nof offence intended in this thread. You only need to look at the high hours and stress mining vehicles and plant suffer. Of course damgae by accident/collision can never be included. One of the products I am talking about is the smart poly that can reform shape, this has revolutionised some parts and design and is by no means expensive. The inability to service many parts including bearing etc in todays cars is also and issue, most old machinery you could service everything. Having said that many parts are chaeper to buy, but getting a mechanic to fit them can make it not worth while, hence the new generation or disposable cars. Its a con when a car complete say costs $30k to buy but to build in the same parts minus labour can cost $90k. I actually have vehicles built for emergency use and cahnging some of the specs makes them last a lot longer and usually the costs are negligable.
I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one.

Originally Posted by CraigE

Well you just keep believing that if it makes you feel safe. No offence but there are many products we see get used in the mining and marine industry that are very cheap and in a domestic situation would make parts/panels etc last a lot longer. There are alloys, super lloys, stainless steel, corrosion inhibitors and coatings for a start. Then there is quality. 2 bearings side by side can look identical, 1 will last 50,000kms and the other will last 500,000kms. Look at the old Patrol diffs (light truck diffs), if you could not get 500,000 plus out of them, now look at the crap diffs they put in.Everything will wear given time and if certain parts become mass produced then the cost would fall. You are entitled to your opinion and I mine, there is nof offence intended in this thread. You only need to look at the high hours and stress mining vehicles and plant suffer. Of course damgae by accident/collision can never be included. One of the products I am talking about is the smart poly that can reform shape, this has revolutionised some parts and design and is by no means expensive. The inability to service many parts including bearing etc in todays cars is also and issue, most old machinery you could service everything. Having said that many parts are chaeper to buy, but getting a mechanic to fit them can make it not worth while, hence the new generation or disposable cars. Its a con when a car complete say costs $30k to buy but to build in the same parts minus labour can cost $90k. I actually have vehicles built for emergency use and cahnging some of the specs makes them last a lot longer and usually the costs are negligable.
I think we will have to agree to disagree on this one.

My work is involved heavily with the mining industry (I'm a subcontractor to several coal mines) and it has f-all to do with cars wearing out.
Nothing in the mining industry is cheap. None of it is even remotely reasonable price.
You're comparing extremely heavily built industrial machinery with cars which retail for a tiny fraction of the cost and weigh about 1/20th.

The car industry is already a long way ahead of most industrial coatings for corrosion resistance. A new road-header doesn't come with a 5 year no-rust warranty.

A smart poly is going to replace what in a car?

Buy anything in parts and you'll pay more. That's where the guy at the parts counter gets his wages from. Reduced servicability comes from parts rationalisation, keeping down both the cost and the weight.
Try to convince any car maker to put another 100kg into a car by spending an extra $100 that the customer can't see or feel and they'll show you the door.

I saw this at a caravan show a couple years ago and they had a pretty convincing demonstration with a used filter they hacked in half. It had little bits of metal around the edges fine as dust. What I understood was that the magnet had to be really super strong to be able to actually pull small particles out of oil, so that makes me question it a little. But I've never had any engine problems after almost 200,000 on it, so it certainly didn't hurt! I bought the snake oil story and figured it was worth the extra insurance. I never did hack my used filter in half to check it, though.

I think this whole argument is a load of crap!!So what if you find metal in your oil,did you worry about it before?To all the people that say this product,part will make your engine last longer,longer for what?How many of you have had an engine from new to worn out'most cars rust out long before the engine wears out or is sold or the engine is boiled or damaged and the ones that do last 400-500k need to be rebuilt regardless of what is done to them.The one thing about all these products that make your engine last longer is that they don't protect the engine when it needs it most,cold morning start-up.That is when your engine wears,thats why you get metal in your filters because the oil is in the sump,it's not at operating temp and not on mateing surfaces.like I said in the first line,LOC. Pat

Originally Posted by GrahamH

I am aware of the use of a magnetic field in diesel fuel supply lines for the purpose of killing diesel bug. It's called the L1000 Fuel Treatment and it originates from Smart Auto Systems in Wellington, NZ. I can't find any reference to them on the web - I can only find a reference to a series of tests using them in Panama - so maybe the company no longer exists.

It was sufficiently well regarded by Telstra Broadcast infrastructure designers to be incorporated into the fuel systems of many of the larger Emergency Power Plants on the high power broadcast sites which they constructed for the two national broadcast networks, back in the '90's.

They are still in service and we never have a problem with diesel bug, although we do have occasional (rare really) issues with water contamination in the underground fuel tanks which is likely to promote its growth. However many of the sites are configured to cycle the fuel in the underground storage tanks through the "day tank" filters (and L1000 units) on a monthly basis and this should trap any contaminants, although if there were a severe infestation of diesel bug, it would clog the filters - I'm not aware of this happening at all.

I'm not saying it works, but it's interesting that it was accepted as a legitimate accessory for diesel gen-sets by a major corporate entity. If anyone is really interested I do have a pdf of the spec sheet which comes with the units (which look just like a fuel filter except the housing appears to be cast aluminium and is quite substantial) but it's a bit big to post here.

The opening paragraph reads ...

"The device, when fitted on the suction side of a diesel engine's fuel system will constantly treat the symptoms, providing systematic control of microbial contaminants. The De-Bug unit is not a filter; it is a static treatment unit. Fuel is passed through the De-Bug before it reaches the lift pump, through a carefully calculated magnetic field for a controlled period of time. As the microbes pass through the differing magnetic fluxes, tests show they disrupt and die leaving no residue. Average size trucks have shown to burn clean within 48 hours.
Sludge and water will settle in the bowl and can be drained out at regular intervals using the drain screw fitted to the bowl base.
This unit is suitable for engines ranging from 90 to 600HP. It is also possible to install two L1000 units in parallel to each other, to increase the flow rate - capacity to 2000 litres per hour.

Application:
For Diesel Fuel, Marine Diesels, Light Diesels, Light Oils, and Gas Oil
...
Size:
110mm dia / 190mm high
...
Materials:
LM6 Aluminium / Marine Grade / Anti Corrosive
Spacers - Acatyle High Tensile Plastic
Magnets - Ceramic Isotropic
..."

Again, I pass no judgement on whether it works or not, I just find it interesting.

I have had personal experience with the unit mentioned above - it is sold as De-Bug - I picked up a tank of contaminated diesel and ended up with major problems with fuel bug - filter changes at less than 1000ks - tried fuel additives designed to eliminate bug: no sucess; removed both tanks cleaned them out - problem returned quite quickly; fitted De-Bug unit without any further attention to fuel system - problem fixed permanently within three days and no further problems. I know of of other real world cases with the same result

Christopher

I am in the mining industry and we do use these items with considerable success.

I also use them on my own vehicles and the amount of minute metal particles they stop from entering the filter( or passing through it is astounding to say the least.

When they were placed on our coal fleet of Kress Haulers the oil samples went from alarm levels of metal to zero. The filters contents were also included in the analysis so as to get a correct reading of the amount of metal loss and the amount dropped to negligible over three successive oil changes of 500 hours between changes.

Originally Posted by Bombardier

I am in the mining industry and we do use these items with considerable success.

Are you using this exact product or a different magnetic filter arrangement?