• Hey Guest!
    British Car Forum has been supporting enthusiasts for over 25 years by providing a great place to share our love for British cars. You can support our efforts by upgrading your membership for less than the dues of most car clubs. There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Upgraded members don't see this banner, nor will you see the Google ads that appear on the site.)
Tips
Tips

I gotta know why !

Share this page

coldplugs

coldplugs

Darth Vader
Country flag
Offline
Why are some spin-off oil filters mounted upside-down? I presume some engineer who never changes his (or her) own oil dreams these things up under the misguided illusion that it somehow prevents proper lubrication for a second or two when the engine is started. Can't they sneak a check-valve thru the cost department or something?
 
the spots where some of the oil filters on engines are mounted makes me scratch my head, as in, how did anyone ever figure they could get it off without getting oil on everything around it. Especially the ones sideways on the block with tons of suspension parts below them. Even the factory remote mounted oil filter on my typhoon is annoying because it's mounted to the fenderwell and oil gets all over that area every oil change no matter how hard I try and keep it off of the clean inner fenders and frame rail in that area.
 
I am convinced the people who design the lubrication system on our cars are sadists.
 
I refer to those as Friday night Happy Hour design decisions - as in "I bet this will drive them nuts!"
 
Rubber glove manufactures have a hand in this! :highly_amused:
 
My thought is that they don't see the rest of the engine bay structure when designing the engine itself. The filter is located s close as possible to the pump so as to minimize the distance traveled to it before going to the engine. So location probably makes sense to that guy, then the filter is rotated as necessary later on to clear whatever else might have ended up in the way. Most of my cars, the filer only has room when facing one direction nore or less. And you also have to remember that an engine family may long outlast the application it was originally designed for. The MG XPAG and Jaguar XK for example both lasted 20 years or more in production, long after the original use was gone.
 
The three-piece filter/pump arrangement on V-12 Jags is a nightmare. Four out of five times on replacing it, the durn'd thing will weep.
 
DrEntropy said:
The three-piece filter/pump arrangement on V-12 Jags is a nightmare. Four out of five times on replacing it, the durn'd thing will weep.
Click to expand...

Probably some secret code that only authorized Jag repairmen are told.
 
DrEntropy said:
The three-piece filter/pump arrangement on V-12 Jags is a nightmare. Four out of five times on replacing it, the durn'd thing will weep.
Click to expand...


And so will the guy changing the oil ...
 
I have always said that the way to stop those problems is to make the engineer who designed them work on the car after a year or two when covered with road grime and grease. Try removing the starter from a Mazda RX7 for example.
 
Guys, guys, you're all overlooking the obvious - the engineers involved all looked at each other and said "there will never be any oil in there anyway, so why worry!" :D
 
Back
Top