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Installed PC Racing FLO Oil Filter


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Performed 1st oil change today and installed PC Racing FLO reusable oil filter http://www.pcracingusa.com/Yamaha-Street-PCS1_p_23.html. Very well made and no issues. Also trying Castrol Power RS Racing 4T SAE 10W-50 full synthetic oil. Will let you know how it goes! First ride seems good, and it maybe my just my perception, but down shifting seemed smoother.
STUFF EVERYTHING - I'VE ALWAYS GOT MY BIKE!
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It seems like a lot of work and mess to clean out a reusable filter when there are some really good quality disposables available. Is there some advantage I'm not aware of?
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I used to work for Honeywell and saw how poorly the FRAM filters ended up being made. Prior to their acquisition they were quite a different design. From the comparisons that I have seen, the paper filters are ok, but not that efficient at passing filtered oil under start-up and during high demand. The bypass valve is an important feature of a paper filter. Incidentally, I was really surprised at how BLACK the oil was after break-in. The filter most only be catching fairly large particulates. In theory, the mesh filter should provide consistent filtering regardless of conditions, with 7x higher flow rates through the filter, but we will see I guess. Everything comes apart easily and it doesn't look too hard to clean. Its built like it would last longer than the bike.
STUFF EVERYTHING - I'VE ALWAYS GOT MY BIKE!
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Fram are well known for quality problems. A better comparison might be the Purolator Pure One filters which have rated highly compared to other disposables.
 
How hard is it to clean the mesh filter?
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Don't know yet. It pulls out easily and the recommendation is to flush with solvent, such as break cleaner, then blow out with compressed air.
 
Agree that Purolator is a good disposable filter brand.
STUFF EVERYTHING - I'VE ALWAYS GOT MY BIKE!
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Guest fzrcraig
Paper, and to a greater extend synthetic, are considered depth filtration meaning that the filter media captures particles throughout its thickness. Wire mesh does not. This style of filter may not provide the protection an engine requires.
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The question of stainless mesh versus paper or synthetic filters seems to be far more controversial than I ever imagined. I did the usual 'google' research and found many conflicting articles. One thing that I couldn't find was a real Test Report, showing what is and isn't filtered by each type with quantitative data. If you came across anything like this, please let me know. The frequency with which the oil is changed may be more significant, as well as the type of oil used.
STUFF EVERYTHING - I'VE ALWAYS GOT MY BIKE!
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  • 1 year later...
Well it's been a year... how's that FLO filter doing? How's the engine holding up? 
 
I agree that there's a lot of conflicting opinions and not a whole lot of data. I'm thinking of ordering one, mainly because I hate the environmental disaster created by 400 million oil filters disposed of every year in this country. But I'd very much like to not screw up my engine!
 
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I'm kinda an oil filter geek. I have to admit that up front you see... LOL
 
SO, there are many lines of thought in this filter debate. Flow, capacity, media, pleats and of course bypass valves, springs and even cardboard or toilet paper filters.
 
Perhaps the best example of oil filters can be found in long haul semi truck use. They have filters and systems that even heat the oil to remove excess water, full flow, bypass flow and multiple flow filters with various size ratings. (SO, your first full flow filter is a stainless screen like yours, then depth filters, with even more effective depth filters as well.... And we are talking 12 to 15 gallons of oil or more depending on the application.)
 
These trucks have fuel filters, transmission filters etc. Heck, a good water separation fuel filter for diesel fuel is always a good idea, and must be drained every few days as they fill up with water pretty fast depending on the fuel and time of year/conditions.
 
SO: Back to a motorcycle filter.
The best spin on disposable filter is generally agreed on to be the Purolater Pure One. That's what I'm running now. It uses a synthetic/paper blended depth pleated media that's good to about 12 microns, and has a quality spring used in the silicone bypass valve and seal.
 
Fram is about as cheap as you can get, cardboard backed, pleated paper and wonder if it works bypass and anti reverse/drain valve. Fram does have some better combined media designs, but all of them use the same cheap as you can get parts everywhere else.
 
Wix is a good company. Champ Labs is a good company. There are lots of filters out there made by Champ, Wix and Purolator with other "brand names" on them. AC. K&N. Mobil 1. WalMart ST. NAPA... And many, many others. All made by Wix, Champ or Purolator and a few others.
 
The trick is NOT buying a name brand filter made by Fram with some other name on it.... there are many websites that go over this in much better detail than I will here.
 
But here is the rub.
 
The BEST. Absoloutely best way to filter oil is with NO bypass valve and a depth filter that can handle all the flow, all the time, cold or hot without bursting the media, while filtering all the oil all the time.
 
And the media has to filter down to under 10 microns.
 
That's a key point. The accepted reality is that particles in your oil 10 microns or LARGER cause the most wear in your engine. Stuff smaller than 10 microns is so small, it fits between the rotating surfaces in the oil and causes little or no wear at all. The larger stuff is either wearing out your hardened metal surfaces, or embedded into the soft metal of your main and rod journal bearings. Once in the bearing, it's no longer causing wear, unless the bearing is worn over time, and then that hard bit of material will score the bearing journal, increasing the wear over time. As you can imagine, many parts with no bearings are metal to metal, and those always will have wear unless the oil has debris smaller than 10 microns in it.
 
Most spin on filters, including the very good Pure One, only filter down to about 15 or 20 microns for a single pass. And the metal mesh one in this thread lists 25 microns as it's capture size.
 
Single pass is the oil that flows through the filter ONE TIME. As your engine runs, oil passes the filter media many times, and thus the media can catch smaller stuff, especially in the depth filter media designs like the Pure One. (But it can sneak past the bypass valve, and all spin on filters pretty much have a bypass valve.) So, in a 2 hour ride, your Pure One filter might have caught up all the stuff down to 15 microns, pretty good oil filter! Limited wear size particles in your oil.
 
When you get home, shut down the engine, and the bike cools, all the debris in the filter is there trapped mostly in the media. When you start up cold the next ride, the cold oil will filter, but some will bypass the filter, and flush your engine with debris again. This debris is filtered out over time again, and depth filters keep it trapped much better than simple paper filters where the debris can just fall off the paper holes when the pressure stops. And worse, as the paper holes plug up with debris, the flow rate drops to the point where a dirty paper filter will no longer flow any oil through the media, and all the oil will be just bypassed all the time. (And might even pick up some of the dirty debris in your clogged up paper pleats of media as it goes by..)
 
So what makes depth filters better than paper? Depth filters have many more holes in them than paper media. The larger stuff is caught up on the outer layers of the depth media, while the smaller stuff is trapped deeper into the media. And as more stuff is caught up, it tends to catch more stuff passing by, actually creating more media surface as it gets "dirty" where a paper media filter is just plugged up when dirty.
 
A well designed and supported depth media can flow more oil than our engines would ever need at one moment, without any need for a bypass valve, cold or hot. All the oil is filterd all the time. And what's better? It's able to catch stuff down to 8 microns or BETTER due to this design, and you know wear is 10 microns or larger.. So the wear debris is caught, trapped in the depth media, and not allowed to flow back into the oil supplied to your engine. Combine that with a quality anti-drain valve, and you have a filter that will not bypass debris into your oil, and keeps itself full while your engine is shut down, so your engine has full oil pressure faster the next time you start your engine. Less wear time for the bearings and other critical contact points.
 
And who happens to make a really good full flow, 8 micron or better oil filter for our bikes?
 
Canton Racing Mecca Filters. Best there is. Sure, there are others, but these work great, are not too expensive and bullet proof proven in race cars all over the world. (And in many street/fleet vehicles as well.)
 
The filter media cartridge is replaceable. The housing will last a lifetime. And since they work so well, you really don't have to change them every 3500 miles, but you can if you want. For a small engine like the CP3, you might get 10k or more from one filter cartridge.
 
On my cars that I've used, I have the larger filters, but larger engines, and only changed the filter once per year, needed or not. (And only changed the oil twice a year, needed or not.) Likely over kill on the Supra, since I had a OilGuard bypass filter on it as well, good to down past 1 micron or better.
 
And that's the other option for any vehicle. A bypass filter is what many semi trucks use. It takes a small amount of oil, and runs it through a very deep bypass filter of various designs. Some use a roll of toilet paper wrapped in string. Some are wound cotton rope. Some use other media, but the OilGuard uses the wound cotton rope. This filter media stops and trapps nearly everything, down to 1 micron or better, so the oil that comes out of the filter is about as pure as it can get. Even cleaner than it was NEW out of the container actually. The bypass filter on my Supra claimed to filter all the oil about every 45 min of use at highway speeds based on a 5 quart system. Reality is that you can't filter all the oil as it's mixed up with the rest of the oil and used in the engine, but you get the idea, it's cleaning the oil constantly really well, just in smaller amounts over time.
 
http://www.cmfilters.com/
 
http://www.ecomicrofilters.com/h115s-std.html
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I may be wrong, (and I'm sure many of you will tell me so) but I subscribe to the theory that if you just change your oil and filter more frequently, the filter becomes a less critical point of failure
 
I'm guessing, with no technical knowledge to back it up, that all filters do a reasonable job when new, but the pace at which they degrade and perform poorly over time is something a non-technical person like me can't calculate. I change my oil about every 3K miles. Maybe I'm just in my own happy world, but it seems to work for me.
 
David
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I just bought a flo racing filter as well, I have one on my vw buggy and it works well there. Was a little concerned about the lack of anti drain back valve but Yamahas don't have the same failure to prime problems that Kawasaki sometimes have.
Will let you know how I get on with it.
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