There is a widespread belief that a magnet on a car oil filter significantly increases engine life, due to the fact that it catches all particles of wear products.
Today the car just needs to be serviced with an oil change, as a result of which there is a chance to check for yourself how plausible this myth is.
Installing a new filter
For the purity of the experiment, let's take a completely new oil filter and several neodymium magnets from old hard drives.
Neodymium magnets on Aliexpress at a discount -
We will install the filter on the car during an oil change. The engine was also pre-washed with a special liquid.
Checking the oil filter with magnets after mileage
After driving 8000 km, we will remove the oil filter.
Clamp it in a vice and cut off the top part using a grinder.
In the cut-off lid, the contours of the magnets, consisting of metal shavings, are clearly visible.
But you shouldn’t rely on them, as they could have been damaged by cutting with a grinder.
Let's take out the filter element and take a look there.
There, too, on the walls you can see silhouettes of magnets surrounded by shavings.
All shiny and large fragments are also from the angle grinder cutting. But the dark frames and darkening of the oil along the contour of the magnet are wear products, microparticles measuring 20-50 microns.
This metal dust is a wear product caused by friction of engine parts. Consequently, the magnets work and collect micro-sawdust from the oil.
Bottom line: is it worth putting magnets on your car's oil filter?
There is not much point here, since a good filter will easily catch all particles (including those from non-ferrous metals). In fact, if you regularly change the filter, then you definitely shouldn’t bother with magnets. But if you use cheap filters, and if they are replaced beyond the maintenance period, then perhaps there will still be some useful benefit from this.
