Ok. This is an idea I had that would not do any damage at all to our beloved Magnas and will prolong the life of it. I was doing doing research on what crap is in oil when you do an oil change and one thing which is the worst is metal debris that gets into your oil from normal engine wear. There are already products in the market (in the U.S) that you can buy to wrap around your oil filter so that any metal particles will get caught there.
Still with me?? Ok i'll go on.
If you buy one of those magnetic wrist bands and wrap it around your oil filter this will do the same and thus keep you engine oil cleaner as the particles wont recirculate and will be removed when you do your next oil change. And the best thing is you can keep reusing your magnetic band. Yay!

Have you seen how thick (viscous) oil is? Drop a coin in a pool of oil and watch how slowly it sinks! It's gotta trap the oil befor it travels through the magnet. That would have to be one damned powerful magnet. Something that powerful would attach itself to the engine block (thus renedering said funnel useless) before any oil pouring could begin.

Me thinks it is marketing hyperbol. Then again if someone wants to post up some proof that it works then I'll print this out and eat it :)

Fair enough. This is an exert from an independant article I read.
"It is very interesting to note that the most damaging contaminant size is ten microns and smaller enabling the contaminant to flow within the film of oil and enter the high-pressure areas of the engine ploughing and tearing the surfaces. The most damaging of the metal contaminants are the hard metals; iron and steel of which are ferrous."
and
"Metal contaminants are introduced into the engine at the time of manufacture, as the fine grindings are impossible to flush out. New oil is contaminated with ferrous metal contaminants under the ten-micron range when it is pumped from the ground to the refining process. The oil is pumped by metal pumps through metal pipelines and stored in metal reservoirs then transferred into containers for sale from quart size containers to forty four-gallon drums."
Attached is one of the ones you can buy in the U.S. called the beartrap. Well its an oil filter cut in half showing the ferrous material that the oil filter didnt catch.
LOL, I sound like a salesman dont I. Well it's just an idea. :cool:

on the mazda that i had the sump plug had a magnet in it (not a strong one)
but it did trap some shavings
remember how many times your oil gets recurclated every 100k's
the theary would work dunno how good though
i possable way to get a strog magnet is pull an ols hard drive apart
at the base of the read write heads are two very stong magets
they could work
and think of it this way
couldn't hurt

Sounds logical but i dont know about that one...

i thought that if you had a magnet that stuck to a piece of metal (ie, the outside of your oil filter) then the magnets power is used up and it absorbs the magnetic field, so its useless?
if this is true, then the magnet would have to be built inside the oil filter..
or is my brain playing funny buggers and mixing something else up from 8th grade science? :nuts:

you can buy very strong magnets to put on the back of oil filters

sump plugs are also mildly magnetic if you havent noticed

and i still dont think it would do very much good or manufacturers would do it as STD

3 things come to mind here, regular oil changes, new oil filters and magnetic sump plugs. If 6G7* engines are racking up 300k kms and more and still running fine thanks to regular servicing, then I dont think those little pieces of metal are doing that much damage. And as turbo_charade said, they would come as standard if they were really necessary, or could considerably prolong the life of an engine.

i thought that if you had a magnet that stuck to a piece of metal (ie, the outside of your oil filter) then the magnets power is used up and it absorbs the magnetic field, so its useless?
if this is true, then the magnet would have to be built inside the oil filter..
or is my brain playing funny buggers and mixing something else up from 8th grade science? :nuts:

nah when you place a magnet on something that can be magnetised, it also becomes part of the magnet....not as strong but it creates north and south polars on it....if that makes sense. someone else can probably explain it a bit better but yeah

The point of a filter is to capture these metallic particles - the only reason it wont is because it has gone bypassed - this happens when the filter becomes clogged and the internal pressure becomes too high, and a rubber valve opens and lets the oil pass through unfiltered.

The point of a filter is to capture anything in the oil :) be it metal, plastic, or carbon.

Cheers
Heath Young

Don't most oil sumps have magnetic strips built into the base of them??? :P

Searching around more on the net and talking to various people this is what I have found out.
You can buy oil filters that have a magnet in them but not sure who makes them. I'm assuming they would be a lot more expensive than standard filters.
Some cars have magnetic sump plugs but not all. You can buy them aftermarket for about $30.
To answer all your comments:
Jellico1: You're right about the mazda's not sure if they all have it. I know the Mitsubishi Pajero (2.6lt) came with one. Not very powerful magnets though. Great idea on the hard drive magnets.
GuRu: Not if they are permanent magnets. Though they will loose most of their ability after about 3 years.
turbo_charade: You said "i still dont think it would do very much good or manufacturers would do it as STD" If that is true then why dont they put better ECU's, strut braces, parabolic lights, more efficient exhaust systems, [insert other worthwhile mod here] on as standard. reason is because production model cars are built to a price.
SexedTF'n: Ditto
tisch: Very true, you were listening in Science class wern't you along with lighting things on fire with the bunsen burner like we all did :D or was that just me?
heathyoung: You are very correct and the oil filter will catch these things up to a point. Anything smaller than 10 microns and 99% of all filters will not filter it so it just goes back out into your engine and grinds away. A standard Oil filter (and most performance ones) will only filter particles from about 10 microns to 25 microns and bigger and your sump will collect whatever your filter misses due to gravity.
Phonic: Not sure of that one, but how often do you take off your sump pan when you do an oil change?

I must stress that as long as the fine metal particles are over 10 microns then yes your oil filter and sump will most likely collect them.

its not bearing that spin or cranks which are scorn on low performance engines, its the head gaskets which break, the timing belts which break, the rings which wear, the valve stem seals.. bad oil really doesn't contribute to engine failure all that often, and if u change ur oil eevry 10,000 then it wont help much at all because the oil filter will still be eccicient enough to catch it. if u leave the oil changes and filter changes longer then yes it may just become a problem. it is only check to do, if u have a old HDD around break it and sling a magnet on the back of ur filter. give you piece of mind aswell i guess.

<Eats humble pie and realises it said filter, not filler> :cry:

I am a fitter and where i used to work building cranes we used to fit filters on the hydraulic system of our cranes which came supplied with a cylindrical stack of magnets in the centre of the filter and when servicing used to have to clean them and they attracted alot of metal fillings (they were hard to get of) but the body of the filter was alloy(not magnetic).I know it is not a engine but same principle. :)