Oil bath air filter

[Imp4]

Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
Gee, that's funny. They are very few tractors out in the fields with paper filters. They run in clouds of dust and most all run oil baths, with a cyclonic pre-filter.

Well no, it's not really funny at all because the OP's question was specific to an automotive pickup truck application, albeit a 1940s vintage.

Your comment about applications in farming tractors may or may not be true, but it is definitely irrelevant to the original posted question.
Farming tractors are different application, different duty cycle, different filtering requirements, different PM intervals, and different performance requirements.

Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are few, if any, modern tractor companies specifying oil bath air filters in new equipment. Classic stuff, maybe, but this smacks of sentimentality at best and not a performance based specification.

Here's a few links to Deere 9000 series tractor and combine filter requirements. They have great pictures too. I count no less than 8 paper filters and zero oil bath filters in these overviews.
So yet again, even in a completely different application, the engineers are selecting paper filter technology. The implication is because it is better. Remember, there's tons of room in these, and they still choose paper filters.

9000 Series Tractors

9000 Series Combines

Looking forward to your response!

 

[Jim Allen]

Originally Posted By: preaction
Jim, thanks for the reply I appreciate it and yes its a 47 WDX PW and I drive it every chance I get so I would like to see it stay that way for a very long time.

Wow! The legendary Power Wagon! That was just a WAG on my part.

Anyway, how I made my air filter was to take an air cleaner from a mid '60s Dodge slant six, cut out the original flange. I had an old oil bath with the same type of clamp that held the original air cleaner to the carb(mine had a clamp rather than a thru bolt) and I cut that off and welded it to the slant six filter housing, adding a hoop with a center stud to hold the air filter lid on. It wasn't a big filter and it fit under the hood of the M-37. I could go to the original filter any time I wanted... though I never did. Eventually, I installed a dual 1-bbl manifold on the engine and that created another can-o-worms air filter wise.. but I'll save you from those details.

 

[preaction]

I was at a military transport get together this weekend at the Sussex county fairgrounds in NJ and there were 2 M37's and there growing on me. It was the first time 27 years I have seen a M198 towed 155mm howitzer a system I was a mechanic for while in the Marines.

 

[Jim Allen]

Originally Posted By: preaction
I was at a military transport get together this weekend at the Sussex county fairgrounds in NJ and there were 2 M37's and there growing on me. It was the first time 27 years I have seen a M198 towed 155mm howitzer a system I was a mechanic for while in the Marines.


Having four-wheeled both, I can say the M-37 is more capable. Shorter for one thing and the body offers better clearances. I used to take mine thru the Rubicon when I lived in CA. Not that the WDX or WM-300 are slouches. They are VERY capable for their size and heft. Of course, on the rough stuff you are spitting teeth out from the brutal ride quality.

Stay tuned: I am going out to the Vintage Power Wagons rally this summer to cover it for Four Wheeler magazine. Last time was in '05.

Funny. First thing I did after getting out of the Army in the early '70s was to get an M-37. Were more M-715s around where I was back then, but the M-37s were still around.

Marine, check this bit of USMC equipment I wrote about recently http://www.fourwheeler.com/features/1802...he-vietnam-era/>

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: Jim Allen
The other thing about oil baths, if you let the oil get down just a few millimeters, efficiency drops like a rock. Let it get muddy... efficiency drops like a rock. That's why they recommended DAILY air filter service in some cases. The harder you run the engine, the faster the oil level drops. Oil bath filters was one reason it was nearly a miracle for an engine to last 100K miles back in the day when your truck was built. On top of all that, they don't flow for [censored]!

Exactly. Often, these were seen on agricultural equipment for that very reason - high maintenance but low cost. You don't want to be replacing cellulose type air filters daily or weekly, as the case may be. They're really not serviceable, either. So, a filtration assembly that can be serviced daily in under fifteen minutes at negligible cost has value. On the farm, particularly at harvest, these oil bath filters were serviced daily.

 

[Jim Allen]

Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: Jim Allen
The other thing about oil baths, if you let the oil get down just a few millimeters, efficiency drops like a rock. Let it get muddy... efficiency drops like a rock. That's why they recommended DAILY air filter service in some cases. The harder you run the engine, the faster the oil level drops. Oil bath filters was one reason it was nearly a miracle for an engine to last 100K miles back in the day when your truck was built. On top of all that, they don't flow for [censored]!

Exactly. Often, these were seen on agricultural equipment for that very reason - high maintenance but low cost. You don't want to be replacing cellulose type air filters daily or weekly, as the case may be. They're really not serviceable, either. So, a filtration assembly that can be serviced daily in under fifteen minutes at negligible cost has value. On the farm, particularly at harvest, these oil bath filters were serviced daily.


As with road engines, the oil bath filters on tractors offered reduced engine life due to their inefficient filtration. Plus the daily and often avoided drudgery of daily cleaning. I live in farm country and farm myself. In talking to old timers, both farmer and mechanics (including my B-in-Law who was a JD mech), air filter maintenance in those days was often put off. Most farmers around here got on their knees and thanked the Deity when paper filters came. Cleaning a cyclonic oil bath filter was still SUPPOSED to be a daily deal but you could get by a lot longer with a cyclonic paper filter. At the end of a hard 14-16 hour day, the last thing a farmer wanted was to be dinking with an air filter so many of them put it off to their detriment. I've come to the conclusion that the portion of the farming population that neglect their equipment is about the same percentage as the rest of the population that neglects their cars.

On top of that, many of the air filters built for ag use (past and present) are well built enough to be cleaned. The manual for both my tractors (one 1970 and one 1989) both detail how. I had a Case tractor filter from the'70s that was washable... you took it out and washed it with a hose.

 

[Garak]

My dad probably had some experience with road tractors and oil bath filters. I did have enough on the farm. Yes, I suppose it was drudgery, but the duty was delegated to me, so my dad got the best of both worlds - no paper filters to spend money on, and me doing the work on the filters. He was particular about maintenance, and the oil bath filters were serviced as directed, with little deviation permitted.

The Case tractors we had did have "normal" air filters, as I recall, that couldn't be washed with a hose and certainly weren't oil bath. If I'm really curious, I have a manual at home somewhere and can check on that. But, there were at least three other examples I can think of on the farm with the oil bath, and I got very familiar with them!

 

[CR94]

Originally Posted By: Garak
... The Case tractors we had did have "normal" air filters, as I recall, that couldn't be washed with a hose and certainly weren't oil bath. ...
?? What were "normal" filters? Our '52 Ferguson tractor had an oil-bath air cleaner, which was indeed a mess to clean, along with its duct. The '68 IH 444 had a paper filter, plus cyclonic trickery that dumped most of the dust out the bottom of its housing.

My former landlady's '55 Chevrolet had oiled metal mesh as an excuse for an air cleaner. Maybe that was what you got back then if you didn't order the optional oil-bath filter? That car went farther without symptoms of worn-out rings than my parents' '54 Chevrolet did with the same engine and an oil-bath air cleaner. I would credit the difference not to the mesh being superior, but to the fact that the '55 didn't frequent dusty gravel roads nearly as much. (It also had a metal mesh intake filter on the valve cover, instead of the '54's open breather holes.) I replaced the mesh with a paper air filter from my Subaru, which happened to fit nicely in the Chevrolet's original mesh housing.

 

[Garak]

I mean the newish Case ones we had did have cellulose filters, non-serviceable, just replaceable. Yes, the combines often had the cyclonic trickery, not to mention other stopgaps, as it were.

 

[A310]

I just finished restoring a 1965 Allis Chalmers forklift and installed an oil bath air cleaner from an old Allis Chalmers tractor. I restored the air cleaner and modified it to fit my forklift. Not in a very dusty environment, so I'm sure it will work out great, I just like the simplicity of them.

 

[Jim Allen]

Combines probably have it worse than tractors for dust around here. Harvesting soybeans is the worst. Mine, which recently caught fire and burned to the ground, had a dash indicator as well as a Donaldson restriction gauge, would need service a couple of times a season. It had a cyclonic deal on it and I'd dump a can of dust out of it once a day. When I saw the dash indicator move to yellow, at the end of that day, I'd vacuum the filter off. I have a home-made stand used for cleaning the water system filters that works great for vacuuming tractor filters. It covers the ends so as not to let dust on the inside and you just vacuum (or pressure wash in the case of the water filters). I have a soft brush on the shop vac. Had that combine five years before the incineration and only bought two new filters, one of those immediately upon first servicing it. On the third season of use, I noticed it began to show yellow much faster so I knew it had loaded up beyond what could be vacuumed.

I'm not advocating this for passenger car or light truck situations without a lot of careful consideration on a case by case basis. Some filters may be robust enough, many are not IMO, but if you are gonna do it, that's the way, NOT compressed air.

FYI, the first tractor to have a paper filter (touted anyway) was the 1961 Allis-Chalmers D-19, which also had the distinction of being the first production turbo diesel tractor. In SAE paper 555C, the A-Cengineers stated:

"Turbocharging causes the engine to use greatly increased quantities of air. Since the bore and stroke have not changed, and since many parts have increased loading, for the good health and life of the engine the engine dust concentration through the air cleaner must be decreased. For this and several other reasons, we elected to go to a dry type air cleaner. The installation is shown in Fig. 11. We are using a remote mounted automatic dirt unloader. Much more detail on this type of air cleaner is being presented by it's manufacturer at this same meeting. Our tests indicate that 1/5-1/50th as much dirt is premitted into the engine induction system as a good oil bath air cleaner. It promises new standards in engine life for farm tractors. Maintenance is much easier and less frequent than on an oil bath cleaner and if the cleaner is not serviced, no serious engine damage results."

The part I underlined above, the reason (stated in another paper) was airflow. An oil bath big enough for the turbocharged tractor was the size of a propane tank and was difficult to fit. In those days you saw some big diesels with two or three oil bath air filters... PITA time two or three if you ask me!

 

[Garak]

Harvest is such a fun and clean time.

The Case tractor had a spinning contraption up front, sealed over the radiator, to ensure crop trash wouldn't plug the radiator, but still a regular number of stops were needed for cleaning depending upon wind direction.