Oil question What the manual says, vs. what Dad says.

It probably isn't cost effective past 100k miles. It all depends how much oil the burning, how much the car is worth, how much money you have, and how much of the work you can do on your own.

Where did I say that regular oil changes would stop oil burning? I didn't. What I said was, "you are no more likely to have an oil burning problem then if you have a secondary filter. " Its not the same. If your rings are frozen, a bypass filter isn't going to fix it. Sorry.

Yeah, no shit the main cause of engine oil consumption is worn out engine components. But all you have to do to prevent excessively dirty oil and worn engine components is change the oil regularly.

Wow, you know how a piston ring works. The ring in question here, however, is the oil control ring. I know what causes oil consumption in Saturn engines because I have taken them apart myself before. I'll take your line. Have you ever taken your own engine apart to figure out what is wrong with it? Didn't think so.

How are you saving on new oil, filter elements, and engine repairs? Are you suggesting that your change your oil less regularly now? With the bypass filter, you now have 2 filters to change, and added cost in oil(how much extra do you need per change?). PLUS the original "not too much money" couple hundred bucks.

As far as you know; is wrong. Not all burn oil.

You have no evidence that it will stop it, because it won't. By the way, when my engine was on its slow descent to its final oil consumption rate of a qt/250 mi before I rebuilt it, it didn't matter how dirty the oil was. It sucked oil, clean or dry. They tend to do that when the oil control ring is frozen.

LOL, you're terrible Kirk. Made the poor guy write up a whole tutorial ;).

Gee, where can you find some power steering fluid? :rolleyes:

Aisle 7 at Kragens right next to the muffler bearings...

...Kirk, we can't take you anywhere.

Replacing the oil rings on the Saturn engine is a great idea and I am confident that would also fix the oil burning problem. However I can guarantee 99% of the people on this newsgroup wouldn't know how to take the engine out of their car, let alone take it apart to replace oil rings. Plus the investment in time, parts, and tools is alot more money for most people than a bypass filter installation.

Quoting from

"By keeping the engine oil cleaner, and by removing water entrained inthe oil, bypass filters can extend the useful life of oil and betterprotect the engine from damage." With a bypass filter, the oil can be changed less often. This isbecause there is roughly 100x (or more depending on model) the filtermedium in a bypass filter than an OEM spin-on filter and it keeps youroil perpetually clean. The spin-on filter becomes irrelevant becausethe bypass filter gives you an equivalent of 2-2.5 engine flushesevery hour (8-10L/hour oil flow). As long as the anti-drainbackdoesn't get old on the OEM filter you can continue to use it. Amsoil,the maker of the dual remote bypass filter, recommends a spin-on (OEM)filter change once every year. For Synthetic oil, 25k change intervals and OEM filter replacements every 12kmiles. With the Frantz, gulf coast, and motorguard filters, the costis cheap because they use either bathroom tissue (toilet paper rolls)or paper towel rolls (about 50 cents per BP element). The length ofextended oil change interval depends on the type of oil you have andhow the car is driven, etc. But in the end you win because it is areturn of investment. The initial costs of the bypass filter areanywhere between $100-200 depending on if you get a complete kit ordecide to buy a working used filter from Ebay. Each oil change thatyou don't need to do saves you at least $10. You also save on enginerepairs. Thus, even if your engine doesn't reduce in oil consumption,you will still get an ROI. Not so much with a piston ring swap.

The department of energy's ongoing bypass filter study:

Yeah, you're right, most don't. And yes, it is a big investment in time, parts, and tools. BUT, it WILL fix the oil burning. A bypass oil filter WILL NOT unstick your rings!

Thats all well and good. But do you really trust your dino oil to 25k changes? I believe the polymers would long be broken down due to the stress and heat cycles, no matter how clean the filter can keep it.

Your right, you won't save any money(ie, ROI) with a piston ring swap. Its not an investment! Its fixing something broken! You are arguing with me about something different. You are trying to say that a BP filter will stop oil burning. I am saying that it will not because it won't unstick your stuck piston rings(which is the cause of excessive oil burning). Will a BP filter keep your oil cleaner? Certainly. Will it save on engine repairs? Doubtful because if you take care of your engine and change the oil regularly, you aren't going to be any more likely to have catastrophic engine failure then you are if you have a BP filter. Regular oil changes will keep the oil clean. As clean as a BP filter? Probably not. But does that tiny tiny tiny extra clean-ness matter? Doubtful.

How much extra oil do you run with it?

High filtration bypass filters were effective at prolonging engine life on the old engines with heavy castings that typically wore out and were rebuildable. Many modern engines with EFI, improved bearing materials, and the modern filters usually fail ultimately by cracking or otherwise breaking a block, head, or reciprocating member. This is because the modern small displacement engine runs at higher mean BMEP, and is made out of highly designed lost foam castings engineered for minimum weight. Another interesting fact is that most cars go to the crusher with the engine still mechanically runnable, having the engine never been removed from the car and the head or pan never off it.

I now have three OM 617 Benz engines sitting in my garage that I have bought for a project. One has a completely failed injection pump and the other two were running but low compression, hence hard cold start, when their host vehicles were euthanized. Rust-and in one case the rotted corpse of the 80-year-old owner found inside the car dead for a week, in July-devalued them to where it "wasn't worth fixing them." The other two were operated until they wouldn't start without killing the battery and then were put up for hauloff. I dragged them home, pulled out everything usable,and hauled them to the scrapper. I sold the transmissions for core for more than I paid for the cars for what that's worth.

You don't have any proof of this. Your idea of clean oil is oil that gets dirty withing a few hundred miles of driving. You have not experienced clean oil, at least not for a relevant amount of time. Motor oil in a Saturn turns black within only the first 500-1k miles after an oil change. Plus you have lots of engine deposits that don't come out with a simple flush or oil change. The only way you will notice a difference in oil consumption is if you either don't drive it or install a filter that takes care of the majority of particles that affect the engine. These particles will also cause the most wear since they get inbetween moving parts. When oil is dirty, piston rings expand, valve seals lose their seal. The microscopic clearances let in oil because oil molecules are thinner than the wear particles. Just think how many millions of engine revolutions it takes to get

3000 miles out of a car. When the car burns a quart in 3k miles, this is an eternity for the engine. The microscopic problem with engine clearances in the end turns into a much larger problem.

Imagine someone is driving 70 MPH on the freeway. For the Saturn, this is equivalent to about 2800 rpm. It will take you

3000miles/(70mph) = 42.8 hours to get 3k miles. This means that the number of revolutions that your engine completes in 3k miles is (2800rpm) * (60min/hour) * (42.8 hours) = 7.19 million revolutions. This is assuming that the car travels at a constant speed w/o hills/accelerating.

After putting the Frantz on my Saturn, the motor oil no longer turns black from all the soot. The oil burning issue is indiscernible

- always stays at the same level on the dipstick. Even after 10k miles without oil changes I have not found the slightest oil burning. It also doesn't give the bad oil smell on hard acceleration and during bumper-to-bumper traffic when the engine is very hot.

Wow. I sure wouldn't go 10,000 between changes no matter what. Oil's pretty much shot by that point. It's not just an issue of dirty, it's an issue of it breaking down on a chemical level...

I EXPERIENCED it. I HAVE PROOF. I KNOW that it burned the same amount, qt/250 mi, on brand new oil! It doesn't matter how new the oil is if your oil control rings are stuck!!! Think about it!!

Obviously you don't know what you're talking about since you quote "piston rings expand" when oil gets dirty.

And your point is?

Yeah, and neither does mine. You still haven't proven that it stops oil burning. Why? Because it doesn't.

Thats what I'm saying! I think I said that a few posts up. He said he'd go

25,000 miles. It doesn't matter how dirty the oil is, when the chemical bonds break down.

Why did you put a 40k mile oil-burning engine in instead of a rebuild?

Bullshit.

You said "In fact my engine now has eliminated the oil burning completely!" and "The effort is worth it because in the end you get a cleaner/ quieter running engine and the peace of mind when it stops burning oil."

You made the claim TWICE.

-DanD