By-Pass Filtration
What Is By-Pass Filtration?
Simply put, By-Pass Filtration is taking a small amount of the oil being pumped, usually 10% to 15%, and running it through a secondary filter before returning it to the oil stream or back to the pan. (It has nothing to do with the By-Pass valve found in your full flow filter. That's discussed in another section.) By-Pass filters work in conjunction with your full flow filter. Installing a By-Pass filter does not eliminate the need for a full flow filter.
Think of the By-Pass Filter as additional protection for you oil and your engine.
Why Should I Have A By-Pass Filter?
Back in the "Dark Ages" as my daughter would describe it, when motor vehicles first became available to the general public, they had no oil filters. When the oil got dirty, you changed it. After a while, someone decided that, if they put a filter system on the oil, besides keeping the oil cleaner, they might even get longer life out to the engine.
The first oil filters installed by the vehicle manufacturers were actually By-Pass filters. They took a small portion of the oil and did a good job of filtering it. Problem was, as vehicles became more advanced, tolerances tighter and lubrication requirements more stringent, the By-Pass filters could not keep up with the demands being placed on them. Because of the flow requirements needed for lubrication, very little of the oil was going through the filters. This allowed dirt particles and other forms of contamination to build up in the oil.
What was needed was a filter that would flow more oil, even if it didn't trap all of the small particles. What was needed was a less restrictive filtering material. Enter, the modern full flow filter (or at least, a reasonable facsimile). The idea was to have all of the oil pass through the filter element before going on to lubricate the engine. The problem is, to move more fluid through a given medium, the medium must be less restrictive. This can be accomplished in several ways.
The surface area inside a filter can be increased to a point by adding more pleats. (If you try to add too many pleats, you actually start closing off the area where the fluid needs to flow.) Once you get to the point where additional surface area is no longer practical, (either physically or economically) you have to switch to the other option.
As a rough rule of thumb, if you double the diameter of an opening, you increase the flow through that opening by a factor of four. As a simple example: If a 1 inch pipe flows 2 gallons of water (at a given pressure), a 2 inch pipe will flow 8 gallons of water (at the same pressure).
By doubling the size of the openings in the filter medium, you significantly increase the flow rate through that medium. The down side is that you also increase the size of the smallest particle the filter will stop. To put it another way, if the particles cause wear, you let more and larger wear causing particles pass through the filter.
By using a By-Pass Filter in conjunction with a Full Flow Filter, you get the benefits of both. You get the flow characteristics of the Full Flow Filter while at the same time you get the small particle filtering ability of the By-Pass Filter. This assures that your equipment gets the lubrication it needs and that that lubricant remains clean, increasing both the useful service life of the lubricant and the life of the equipment.
How Do I Add By-Pass Filtration?
There are several ways to add a By-Pass Filter but the easiest and probably quickest is with one of the AMSOIL BMK Dual Remote Filter Systems as shown in the picture above. How easy is it?
(The above is for cars and light trucks. If you have a larger truck, AMSOIL also has a BMK By-Pass Filter system to fit it but the installation is slightly different.)
For more information see By-Pass Filters For Cars, Light Trucks, Boats etc. or By-Pass Filters for Heavy Trucks, Marine Engines etc..
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