Noise when using a Motor Guard oil cleaner with a Perma-Cool sandwich adapter

[RalphPWood]

Noise when using a Motor Guard oil cleaner with a Perma-Cool sandwich adapter on a Toyota four cylinder pickup.
I have heard of this happening but have never had it happen on my personal cars or trucks.
I have sold may Motor Guards and most of them are used with adapters. This problem seems to be very rare but does happen.
What can be done about it?

Ralph

 

[Gary Allan]

Is this valve train noise, Ralph? If so, and it doesn't have gauges, I'd say it needs to have a very small hole drilled in the Permacool. I'd start with a 1/32.

 

[commtrd]

My truck still has the noise but only when the engine is warmed up. When I start the engine and before it is fully warmed up, there is no flow through the Motorgard and there is no noise either. This tells me that the relief valve in the Permacool is functioning correctly and I never get any indication from the idiot light (no gauge unfortunately) that there is an error status as far as oil pressure goes. At any rate, the noise starts when the engine is fully warmed up and not before. There may actually be oil flow into the filter but I can't feel any movement in the hoses like I can when it is warmed up. Evidently the oil viscosity is thicker when it is cold and thins out enough when warmed up to allow flow into the Motorguard. I am running Amsoil 10W-30 full synthetic.

As the engine warms up, the Motorguard starts to warm up as oil flow starts through it. The more the engine warms up, the louder the noise gets. At full operating temp, the noise is pretty loud inside the cab. At road speed, I cannot hear it.

I drove the truck to Houston from Corpus Christi (230 miles) and the truck ran great. So I am not worried about the noise...I know it is in the filter housing (or hoses?) although I can't isolate where exactly it is coming from. Anyway the filter is doing what it is supposed to be doing as is the Permacool sandwich adapter. It is interesting how the flow to the Motorguard is somewhat restricted until the oil gets hot. When it is hot though, there is absolutely no doubt that it is going through the filter! I can both feel it and hear it...I do not think I need to drill a small hole in the Permacool adapter. The noise is not valvetrain noise either. I would still like to figure out what the noise is though.

BTW, the kit ccontents were top-notch quality. The hose is nearly indestructible, the fittings were perfect for the application, and this lead to a great looking and clean install. Thanks Ralph.

 

[oilforfun]

Hi,
What purpose would drilling a hole in the sandwich adaptor serve?

When using a permacool sandwich adaptor is it required that you remove the orifice limiter on the motorguard?

Are there pros and cons to leaving the orifice limiter on the motorguard when using the permacool sandwich adaptor?

Has anyone done a study on how much of a cooling effect the motorguard has on your oil?

Thanks,
Oilforfun

 

[rg144]

"I can't isolate where exactly it is coming from"

Don't mechanics use a baseball bat to isolate the sound (no joke)? One end up to the ear, the other on suspected parts of the engine.

 

[Gary Allan]

What purpose would drilling a hole in the sandwich adaptor serve?


In certain applications, the poppet orifice in the Permacool isn't enough of an opening to provide full flow. This is a very rare situation where higher volume pumps are involved. It usually doesn't result in a noise ..as much as a reduced pressure reading ..which means that your oil pump would be in relief all the time. Again this is very rare. I initially doubted Ralph's assertion that the poppet was enough to carry the ENTIRE lube load of the engine ..since the tp filter is a relative BRICK WALL to oil flow (hot or cold) ..so I drilled two small holes in my PermaCool when putting on my big cotton wound filter. I got flow when cold ..but as soon as it warmed up ..the flow would not go through the bypass filter. I tapped and plugged the two small holes ...viola~! = it worked. This led to many revelations about flow and restriction for me.

The more the engine warms up, the louder the noise gets. At full operating temp, the noise is pretty loud inside the cab. At road speed, I cannot hear it.

This should not be a result of the addition of the MG (and related hardware). This should be a result of oil viscosity. There could be the obscure possibility that the MG setup (including the Permacool poppet relief) restricts oil flow ..and that ONLY the oil's higher viscosity masks reduced flow ..and that even the increase flow when the oil is warm doesn't compensate for it when the oil loses its cold visc. Usually these are "self correcting" states ..but you could have an odd non-linear component to temp/visc/flow that could be at play here.


Let me ask a couple of questions:

Miles on engine?

Is the noise a buzzing sound? (higher frequency clicking)?

 

[RalphPWood]

Drilling a hole in the sandwich adapter lowers the resistanced thru the adapter and reduces the flow thru the Motor Guard. If the noise is coming from the flow going thru the Motor Guard reducing the flow thru the Motor Guard would quiet it down. Normally the restrictor orifice isn't needed with a sandwich adapter because you aren't causing a parasitic loss like you would with the coventional system of teeing off at the oil pressure switch. There will be times when the Motor Guard will be filtering all the oil the engine needs. Any extra oil the engine needs will go directly to the full flow filter thru the relief valve in the adapter. All of the oil has to go thru the full flow filter to get to the engine. Where it gets complicated is when the relief valve is in the mount instead of the filter such as as on many GM engines. the adapters for the GM engines might not have a relief valve. That converts the engine to a straight bypass system such as with a 53 Chevy. The full flow filter can only get what is coming from the Motor Guard. The rest of the oil the engine needs bypasses both filters. If you use an adapter with a bypass valve such as a universal 189 and plug the GM bypass valve you have converted to a Ford system like most cars.
Getting back to the noise. If the noise is caused by too much flow thru the Motor Guard we have to reduce the flow. We could use a thicker oil. We could drill the adapter. Maybe 1/8" for a small engine or 7/32" for a large engine. We could get a needle valve from the hardware store and throttle the flow until the noise goes away but the filter still gets hot. The needle valve could go anywhere in the system. Normally the slower the flow filter thru a filter the better the cleaning. That's why two filters will clean better than one if the flow is the same thru both filters as it is with one. That is one advantage with a sandwich adapter, the oil isn't forced thru the element. It can filter at it's own pace. The pressure is only slightly more at the inlet. You will get some cooling from a bypass filter but the surface area is pretty small compared to a regular cooler.
Before 1953 all cars that had oil filters had bypass filters. They were far superior to the full flow filters on modern cars. There were probably a lot of studies done on the cooling effects of bypass filters. I have never seen any. My 1937 Studebaker book says "don't drain the oil but change the bypass filter when the oil starts looking dirty on the dipstick". Actually it is better to change the filter before the oil gets dirty. Frantz came out with a kit that allowed you to use the more dense TP instead of the cotton elements. It was very messy to change but was very effective at cleaning oil.
Ralph

 

[trynew]

quote:

---

Has anyone done a study on how much of a cooling effect the motorguard has on your oil?

---

Below is a link to a discussion on oil coolers. Near the bottom is a discussion about the Cool Collar which might provide some insite into the cooling effects of a Motorguard.

There is a cool collar available for Frantz filters, but none for a Motorguard, that I know of.

Discussion of coolers

 

[acewiza]

Check the input/output direction of flow from the permacool. I had the inny and outtie ports reversed on the 5.2 v8 in my Dodge pickup when I first hooked it up and the only symptom was a mild noise like you describe.

 

[canadiantim]

I had researched using a Permacool on a Toyota 4 cylinder. The Permacool I required was also the same one that would work for a Ford V8 (which should have greater oil requirement) so I wondered if my little Toyota oil pump would have any trouble overcoming the "universal" bypass poppet spring since it was stiff enough for a V8.

I suspect:

1)when the engine is cold, the oil is thick and the pressure is high so the poppet valve in the adapter works perfectly as it should.

2)when the oil warms up, thins out and the effective pressure drops, the small engine is getting NEARLY all the oil it needs through the MotorGuard. It needs a little bit of extra oil through the poppet valve, resulting in the valve cycling and causing a rattle. I suspect it's sitting right on the edge of using the poppet valve and literally "can't decide" so the poppet opens and closes quickly causing the noise.

Drilling a SMALL hole should fix (search previous post by Gary Allan keyword "adapter")

Hope this helps

 

[Gary Allan]

It could be the poppet modulating so fast that it rattles. I wonder how it could produce such a substantial sound that you can hear it beyond a certain volume of oil being pumped ..

I've heard this occuring on some transmission cooler line installations. It was reported as a buzzing.

Btw- if you do drill a hole (given up on anything else as the cause) ..make sure that it is VERY SMALL or you will be tapping and plugging it and then drilling a smaller one. Get the absolute SMALLEST drill bit that you can find. If one hole doesn't do it ..then add another ..don't got to a bigger drill bit. Every 50% increase in diameter doubles the surface area (2.25X) and therefore volume capacity.