Challenger OIL filter pireps?

[Mooneymite]

My neighbor who runs a airplane shop is raving about the Challenge reusable oil filters and is having a hard time keeping them on hand.  I did a Mooneyspace search and found lots of threads about the challenger air filters, but almost nothing about the oil filter.

Any pireps?

My neighbor showed me how clean the oil in his Stearman was after 25 hours using the Champion filter.  It was still golden whereas it used to be black prior to the oil change.  Pretty convincing if I owned a Stearman, but how does it do in a Mooney?

(Spruce is currently sold out until May 25   https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/eppages/challengerLifetime.php?clickkey=38453).

While it is pricey, notice how much the price of disposable oil filters has risen!

[Will.iam]

I was always under the assumption that oil turns black from blow by from the pistons. And since the challenger filter filters 30 micron filtration and the tempest oil filter filters 20 micron filteration. I have a hard time believing it was changing to a filter that doesn’t filter as fine of particles as paper and the oil was not black. Maybe he did a top overhaul when he switched to the other oil filter? Only way to know for sure it is the challenger filter is switch back to a paper filter and see if the black comes back in the oil. 
 

Disreguard, i was mistaken on tempest filtration. I thought  it was 20 but it’s actually 40 micron so maybe the challenger filter can remove the blow by? 

[A64Pilot]

To get an idea as to filtration, I filtered my fuel on the boat with a Racor 500 filter to 2 microns.

‘Very efficient oil filtration is possible in one of two ways, either a huge filter as a normal sized fine filter would have too much restriction, or a bypass filter that only filters a small amount of oil so most bypasses the filter, those work well as over time all the oil is filtered. 

‘Back in the 70’s and 80’s bypass filtration with Amsoil and pre-lubing was all the rage. Theory was if you eliminate start up wear by having oil pressure before the engine turns over and always running very clean pure synthetic oil an engine would last almost forever.

Good seemingly plausible hypothesis, but it didn’t work, for starters not nearly as much wear occurs at start up as we thought, and my opinion auto engines were just crap then

To really decrease engine wear you need to remove particles larger than about 10 microns, there are lots of study’s on that I’ll let you guys Google it

Back in the day there were oil filters that honestly used a roll of toilet paper and crazy as it sounds it really did a good job, I googled it and they are still out there, not for your airplane of course

https://www.toiletpaperoilfilter.com/thetoiletpaperoilfiltercompany.html

Big motors use centrifuges to clean oil 

https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/1347/centrifuge-contaminants

But yes if you can get an approved filter ti filter less than 10 microns you may be onto something.

Personally I’ll stay with more frequent oil change intervals. If I change every three months and fly 100 hours a year it works out to a 25 hour OCI.

What does that have to do with the Challenger? Step in the right direction, but 20 microns isn’t small enough, to get small enough and still fit would I think take a bypass system, which I doubt we will ever see.

‘If you let a filter drain overnight and have a good filter cutter, it’s easy and not a big mess.

[Fly Boomer]

3 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

to get small enough and still fit would I think take a bypass system, which I doubt we will ever see.

I thought the filters we commonly use were bypass type?  Theory being that dirty oil is better than no oil.

[GeeBee]

The color of the oil not an indicator of how good filtration is occurring. Indeed, oil that turns dark indicates it is doing its job of holding contaminants in suspension which is why it is called, AD oil, the operative word, dispersant. What does it disperse? Carbon and combustion by products for one thing.

Let's imagine you have a 25 micron carbon particle. In a Tempest filter it is held on the media while oil flows over it, eventually dissolving it and yes, that makes the oil blacker. The same particle in a Challenger filter would go right through it, back into the sump where it would accumulate with the other sub 30 micron particles ultimately sinking to the bottom of the sump, or the out portions of the crank galley in the form of sludge. Since the Challenger filter does not stop as many particles, there are less particles on the media to disperse through the chemical properties of the oil, thus it "looks cleaner".

So if 20 is good, why not 10? You can over do it to the point the engine is starved of oil. A filter is a restrictor of flow and too much restriction and the engine gets starved for lubrication. That is why on high performance engines like marine racing engines you put on a "looser filter" and accept more oil changes.  On airplanes, a "loose filter" or a small sump (like that of the IO-550) need more frequent oil changes to minimize sludge buildup.

[Guest]

A centrifugal oil filter works quite well.  This is what I found in a crankshaft when we pulled the prop to replace the alternator belt.

Clarence

[A64Pilot]

4 hours ago, Fly Boomer said:

I thought the filters we commonly use were bypass type?  Theory being that dirty oil is better than no oil.

Different kind of bypass, our filters are full flow, which means usually all the oil flows through it, until the pressure differential exceeds the set value the whats often called the cold oil relief valve opens and allows oil to bypass. The oil filter doesn’t know the difference between thick cold oil and a clogged filter so it opens whenever the resistance to flow through the filter is causing too much decrease in oil flow which causes a pressure differential. So bypass when the oil is cold is common. Bypass from dirty oil or sludge should never occur.

A bypass oil filter is one that the media is so fine filtering that it can’t be full flow, you can’t get enough oil through it without loosing too much pressure so most of the oil bypasses it, but even if it’s only filtering 10% of the total it will filter all of the oil pretty frequently.

The finer the filter area, the more restriction there is, so to keep restriction down you must either significantly increase filter size, or have a lot of oil bypass it. 

So in other words we can’t have a fine as in less than 10 micron filter as it would block too much oil flow, unless it was a bypass filter, or you mounted a big one on the firewall or something.

[Shmoo]

7 hours ago, GeeBee said:

The color of the oil not an indicator of how good filtration is occurring. Indeed, oil that turns dark indicates it is doing its job of holding contaminants in suspension which is why it is called, AD oil, the operative word, dispersant. What does it disperse? Carbon and combustion by products for one thing.

Let's imagine you have a 25 micron carbon particle. In a Tempest filter it is held on the media while oil flows over it, eventually dissolving it and yes, that makes the oil blacker. The same particle in a Challenger filter would go right through it, back into the sump where it would accumulate with the other sub 30 micron particles ultimately sinking to the bottom of the sump, or the out portions of the crank galley in the form of sludge. Since the Challenger filter does not stop as many particles, there are less particles on the media to disperse through the chemical properties of the oil, thus it "looks cleaner".

So if 20 is good, why not 10? You can over do it to the point the engine is starved of oil. A filter is a restrictor of flow and too much restriction and the engine gets starved for lubrication. That is why on high performance engines like marine racing engines you put on a "looser filter" and accept more oil changes.  On airplanes, a "loose filter" or a small sump (like that of the IO-550) need more frequent oil changes to minimize sludge buildup.

I’m also interested in the challenger oil filter, but it seems difficult to get any pireps for it on any forum. Every pirep request post seems to get redirected with a similar filtering-explained response that while very well explained gets the filtering levels backwards. I wonder where this 20 microns tempest fiction started. maybe there is some 3rd party testing I don’t know about?
Seems to me the tempest is 40 and challenger is 30 microns rated. 

Anyway, I’ll second the OP request for any actual pireps.

 

Not meaning to call out @GeeBee, this tempest and champion being 20 microns rated seems to be a pretty widespread idea.

 

[carusoam]

5 hours ago, M20Doc said:

A centrifugal oil filter works quite well.  This is what I found in a crankshaft when we pulled the prop to replace the alternator belt.

Clarence

 

Doc,

Is that a sleeve of sludge falling away from the shaft sides…?

Somebody reported seeing a rag left in one… (in another post somewhere…)

This looks more like a whole role of paper towels… 

 

Best regards,

-a-

[Guest]

5 hours ago, carusoam said:

Doc,

Is that a sleeve of sludge falling away from the shaft sides…?

Somebody reported seeing a rag left in one… (in another post somewhere…)

This looks more like a whole role of paper towels… 

 

Best regards,

-a-

Yes, it’s the sludge/ dirt that was stuck to the inner bore of the crankshaft.  

Clarence

[A64Pilot]

All that red silicone would have me concerned

Unfortuanately I don’t know of anything that can be done about the sludge, it’s pretty common. Of course it’s because there is no flow through here, I deeply cycle my prop three times during run up in the hope that helps, but I have real idea if it does 

[A64Pilot]

7 hours ago, Shmoo said:

I’m also interested in the challenger oil filter, but it seems difficult to get any pireps for it on any forum. Every pirep request post seems to get redirected with a similar filtering-explained response that while very well explained gets the filtering levels backwards. I wonder where this 20 microns tempest fiction started. maybe there is some 3rd party testing I don’t know about?
Seems to me the tempest is 40 and challenger is 30 microns rated. 

Anyway, I’ll second the OP request for any actual pireps.

 

Not meaning to call out @GeeBee, this tempest and champion being 20 microns rated seems to be a pretty widespread idea.

 

What do you expect in a Pirep? You can’t filter fine enough to really make a difference in the size constraints we have, besides how can the average pilot know how well it filters?

Then in all honesty an average person who spends money on a product is biased to like the product they spent money on, this justifies the expense and their good decision, it’s normal and we are all biased myself included

So since you can’t really tell how well something performs it’s primary function I guess what’s left is how easy is it to clean or how nice it looks etc?

However if someone is really interested the only way I know of would be to send oil out to a testing lab and have then do a particle count, once you get a few and establish a baseline, then change filters and send oil samples at the time the oil is changed and see if there is any difference. A heavily used aircraft like a trainer may take just a few months, me it would take a year I guess

‘I’d bet for a little extra money Blackstone could add a particle count to their analysis, a particle count tells you how much of what size particles are in the oil and will show how effective a filter is. Particle counts are common and used by industries who want to know how clean their oil is. on edit after a quick look, seems they do https://www.blackstone-labs.com/particle-count-test/

Because filters are rated differently, rarely are they rated as absolute, and I suspect comparing one aircraft filter to another isn’t as simple as comparing a number

https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/1289/oil-filter-efficiency

https://www.ecogard.com/truth-about-oil-filter-micron-ratings/

 

 

Edited May 3, 2022 by A64Pilot

[GeeBee]

8 hours ago, Shmoo said:

I’m also interested in the challenger oil filter, but it seems difficult to get any pireps for it on any forum. Every pirep request post seems to get redirected with a similar filtering-explained response that while very well explained gets the filtering levels backwards. I wonder where this 20 microns tempest fiction started. maybe there is some 3rd party testing I don’t know about?
Seems to me the tempest is 40 and challenger is 30 microns rated. 

Anyway, I’ll second the OP request for any actual pireps.

 

Not meaning to call out @GeeBee, this tempest and champion being 20 microns rated seems to be a pretty widespread idea.

 

You have to differentiate between a micron rating, and a micron size. A 40 micron rating means it will filter 90% of particles at 40 microns but it will filter 25 microns at 75% efficiency. Thus to do that, it must in fact have a size less than 25 microns. So how 10% of 40 micron particles get through a 25 micron hole? Pressure IOW force. A screen that has a 30 micron hole is simply that. How much gets through that hole depends on the material involved and how much pressure is upon it. So the question for the Challenger filter is what is its SAE efficiency rating (in a ARP 1400 test), not its screen size. What I can tell you is with a screen size of 30 microns, is its 25 micron efficiency will be near zero.

[Shmoo]

5 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

What do you expect in a Pirep? You can’t filter fine enough to really make a difference in the size constraints we have, besides how can the average pilot know how well it filters?

Then in all honesty an average person who spends money on a product is biased to like the product they spent money on, this justifies the expense and their good decision, it’s normal and we are all biased myself included

So since you can’t really tell how well something performs it’s primary function I guess what’s left is how easy is it to clean or how nice it looks etc?

However if someone is really interested the only way I know of would be to send oil out to a testing lab and have then do a particle count, once you get a few and establish a baseline, then change filters and send oil samples at the time the oil is changed and see if there is any difference. A heavily used aircraft like a trainer may take just a few months, me it would take a year I guess

‘I’d bet for a little extra money Blackstone could add a particle count to their analysis, a particle count tells you how much of what size particles are in the oil and will show how effective a filter is. Particle counts are common and used by industries who want to know how clean their oil is. on edit after a quick look, seems they do https://www.blackstone-labs.com/particle-count-test/

Because filters are rated differently, rarely are they rated as absolute, and I suspect comparing one aircraft filter to another isn’t as simple as comparing a number

https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/1289/oil-filter-efficiency

https://www.ecogard.com/truth-about-oil-filter-micron-ratings/

 

 

What is any pirep? Some anecdotal first hand info about a product. Like it’s not that easy to clean, hard to get a good seal, oil temp decrease, or didn’t notice any difference. Or maybe one of the crazed zealots around here did some particle testing! Unlikely but we have to ask. What I definitely wasn’t expecting was a narrow post about why pireps are tough to depend on. 

5 hours ago, GeeBee said:

You have to differentiate between a micron rating, and a micron size. A 40 micron rating means it will filter 90% of particles at 40 microns but it will filter 25 microns at 75% efficiency. Thus to do that, it must in fact have a size less than 25 microns. So how 10% of 40 micron particles get through a 25 micron hole? Pressure IOW force. A screen that has a 30 micron hole is simply that. How much gets through that hole depends on the material involved and how much pressure is upon it. So the question for the Challenger filter is what is its SAE efficiency rating (in a ARP 1400 test), not its screen size. What I can tell you is with a screen size of 30 microns, is its 25 micron efficiency will be near zero.

To be clear the paper filters are too organically made to say it has some size x. The stainless mesh has the benefit of being able to declare a specific size but I’ll agree that’s still not useful.  Size  vs rating isn’t the actual disconnect here. It’s rating type. Challenger declares an absolute rating because that’s what suits them. Tempest/Champion use a nominal (sae) rating because that’s what suits them. Neither uses the more useful (imo) beta rating. 
 

i agree that knowing the the challenger nominal rating would be interesting but I think the actually question is whether 34 micron ASTMF316 rating has any effect vs the 40 micron nominal rating in our engines? Our tolerances are such that some 100 micron particles might be much worse than many 30 micron particles. IIRC I heard Mx Lord Busch say something about with our oil composition and engine tolerances anything below 30 micron just doesn’t matter much to us.

either way my post (like the op) was a request for more info because it’s hard to find anywhere else. We know these things are hard to compare, that doesn’t mean we don’t try. Fortunately @Mooneymite I finally found some decent usage info on The vans forum. And apparently the magnet is a PITA to clean and many people don’t save any time vs cutting conventional filters assuming you cut your own filter. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Shmoo said:

What is any pirep? Some anecdotal first hand info about a product. Like it’s not that easy to clean, hard to get a good seal, oil temp decrease, or didn’t notice any difference. Or maybe one of the crazed zealots around here did some particle testing! Unlikely but we have to ask. What I definitely wasn’t expecting was a narrow post about why pireps are tough to depend on. 

To be clear the paper filters are too organically made to say it has some size x. The stainless mesh has the benefit of being able to declare a specific size but I’ll agree that’s still not useful.  Size  vs rating isn’t the actual disconnect here. It’s rating type. Challenger declares an absolute rating because that’s what suits them. Tempest/Champion use a nominal (sae) rating because that’s what suits them. Neither uses the more useful (imo) beta rating. 
 

i agree that knowing the the challenger nominal rating would be interesting but I think the actually question is whether 34 micron ASTMF316 rating has any effect vs the 40 micron nominal rating in our engines? Our tolerances are such that some 100 micron particles might be much worse than many 30 micron particles. IIRC I heard Mx Lord Busch say something about with our oil composition and engine tolerances anything below 30 micron just doesn’t matter much to us.

either way my post (like the op) was a request for more info because it’s hard to find anywhere else. We know these things are hard to compare, that doesn’t mean we don’t try. Fortunately @Mooneymite I finally found some decent usage info on The vans forum. And apparently the magnet is a PITA to clean and many people don’t save any time vs cutting conventional filters assuming you cut your own filter. 

You’ve come the right place for knowledge and opinions!

Clarence

[Mooneymite]

I guess in my OP, my neighbor gave us a pirep, but for his Stearman.  He specifically mentioned that when he did an oil change, he soaked the filter element in some sort of solvent (avgas?) and when it settled out, he could see exactly what it was that had been filtered out.  When you compare that to the "needle in the haystack" of looking for debris in a paper element, that's pretty neat.

Perhaps I should have started this thread asking, "Has anyone installed a Challenger oil filter on their Mooney?".

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Mooneymite said:

I guess in my OP, my neighbor gave us a pirep, but for his Stearman.  He specifically mentioned that when he did an oil change, he soaked the filter element in some sort of solvent (avgas?) and when it settled out, he could see exactly what it was that had been filtered out.  When you compare that to the "needle in the haystack" of looking for debris in a paper element, that's pretty neat.

Perhaps I should have started this thread asking, "Has anyone installed a Challenger oil filter on their Mooney?".

Not on the Comanche, but I’ve ordered one for the RV7.

Clarence

[Guest]

My Challenger oil filter arrived today.  Here it is for comparison to a Tempest AA48110.

Clarence

[hammdo]

Sexy...

but, I heard if metal is trapped in the element, you have to replace it -- and also 5 years or 1200 hrs... still interesting...

-Don

[Guest]

50 minutes ago, hammdo said:

Sexy...

but, I heard if metal is trapped in the element, you have to replace it -- and also 5 years or 1200 hrs... still interesting...

-Don

I haven’t read the maintenance instructions for it yet.  Will read them tomorrow.

Clarence

[A64Pilot]

I assume it’s best cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner?

[lithium366]

After switching to Challenger filter my oil temp is 10-12 degrees higher. My friend had the same issue. Switching back to a paper filter brings temperature back Will call Challenger tomorrow

[Canadian Gal]

51 minutes ago, lithium366 said:

After switching to Challenger filter my oil temp is 10-12 degrees higher. My friend had the same issue. Switching back to a paper filter brings temperature back Will call Challenger tomorrow

Interesting.

[carusoam]

There is a filter by-pass that occurs if the filter packs up… does the by-pass Skip the oil cooler?

Sounds like a plumbing issue may be occurring with the new filter…

PP guessing only…

Best regards,

-a-

[Pinecone]

On 5/2/2022 at 1:47 PM, A64Pilot said:

Big motors use centrifuges to clean oil 

 

My 71 Fiat 850 Spider had a centrifugal oil filter.  The crank pulley had a cover and the oil flowed through it.  You had to pop off the cover and dig out the gunk every so often.  It was mainly grey colored, probably lead from the leaded gas we ran back then.