So washing the element like you did by sluicing it around in solvent can transfer contamination from the dirty side to the clean side It’s contamination control 101 Nice paint job!
Thanks a lot! The design was done by Conradd Kothman Maverick Aircraft Design and it was painted by Ken Kaminski's team at Flying Colors in Benton Harbor, MI.
I’m not a pilot, but have a few questions. 1. Why don’t you simply use a new oil filter and O-ring instead of reusing the ones you cleaned with solvent? 2. The threaded rod that the oil filter is installed on seemed to wobble. Is that how the rod was designed? 3. Do you use a torque wrench on the final filter case tightening? 4. Do you send your oil out for analysis? 5. Is there a small port in the engine fuselage that you can use to see whether the oil filter holder is leaking? Thanks in advance.
Happy to answer. 1. Most people use disposable oil filters. They're about 50 bucks a pop though, and you go through 2-4 a year depending on how much you fly. The reusable filter is a few hundred bucks, and specifically designed to be reused, so should pay for itself pretty quickly. 2. Your observation was astute. The rod wasn't firmly torqued into the filter housing when we first put it on, so it unscrewed as we took the filter off the first time. That has since been fixed. But since the filter is safety wired anyway, no real chance of it backing out while the filter is installed. 3. Correct, a torque wrench is used. After you do it long enough though, you get a pretty good idea for what the proper torque feels like. 4. I don't send mine out, but plenty do. Perhaps as the engine wears and ages more we may do so. 5. No place to observe for leaks, but I can tell you that on most aircraft engines, oil leaks out from multiple places on the engine anyway. It requires readding a quart of oil to the engine every about every 10 hours of flight at present.
