Toilet Paper ...

[Admiral]

So, I picked up two more flatheads this morning, not that I need more old car parts, but the price was right and I just couldn’t resist . I snagged what appears to be an 8BA as well as an EAB, along with some miscellaneous parts.

The EAB turned over and had oil in the pan so I pulled its heads. JACKPOT! It’s got a stock bore, barely any cylinder-wall ridge, all the valves move AND its water jackets are the cleanest I’ve ever seen in a side-valve V8. Other than the expected lack of hardened seats it might be a winner.

Anyway, when I opened up the oil-filter canister it looked like it was packed full of sludge, but much to my surprise that wasn’t the case. Someone had stuffed a roll of toilet paper in there ! Have any of you guys seen this before? I can’t imagine this arrangement would do ANYTHING to filter the oil since the roll has no gaskets or seals to prevent the oil from just flowing over its top and back into the pan. Weird.

[Kube]

Originally Posted by Admiral

So, I picked up two more flatheads this morning, not that I need more old car parts, but the price was right and I just couldn’t resist . I snagged what appears to be an 8BA as well as an EAB, along with some miscellaneous parts.

The EAB turned over and had oil in the pan so I pulled its heads. JACKPOT! It’s got a stock bore, barely any cylinder-wall ridge, all the valves move AND its water jackets are the cleanest I’ve ever seen in a side-valve V8. Other than the expected lack of hardened seats it might be a winner.

Anyway, when I opened up the oil-filter canister it looked like it was packed full of sludge, but much to my surprise that wasn’t the case. Someone had stuffed a roll of toilet paper in there ! Have any of you guys seen this before? I can’t imagine this arrangement would do ANYTHING to filter the oil since the roll has no gaskets or seals to prevent the oil from just flowing over its top and back into the pan. Weird.

I took out a roll of TP on a filter I'd restored just last year.

[petehoovie]

http://www.frantzoil.com/TOILETPAPER.html

"Now, the Frantz Oil Filter with it's toilet paper element design, filters up through the center at the bottom of the unit but now it delivers the oil down the entire 4" height of the TP roll exiting at the bottom and being recirculated again back to the engine. The oil does not penetrate sideways through the roll as if from inside the cardboard and out the last row of paper. It filters down the entire height of the roll as when it sits on your bathroom sink."

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Frantz-Toile...FXIEq5&vxp=mtr

[30-9]

Toilet paper..... No chit.

[RalphM]

It would seem to me that would do more harm than good. Small pieces of wet TP floating through your oil passages, can't be good.

[paul2748]

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Using toilet paper for an oil filter goes way back. In my opinion, a stupid thing to do but for some I guess it worked.

I certainly wouldn't use it. Oil filters are relatively cheap and function much better.

[Joe Immler]

Pete, Thanks for posting the Frantz article. I have read things about TP filters a long time ago. And no, I have never dropped any in the toilet by accident..........toilet paper that is.

[tubman]

My dad was a rep for Frantz back in the early '60's. Every setup came with a strip of absorbent paper (the same size and shape as oil change filters back then). It was divided into several squares with (i think) "200 Miles", "400 Miles". "600 miles" etc. printed on them. You would pull the dipstick at the proper mileage and touch it to the proper section of the absorbent sticker. You could actually see the oil get cleaner as you drove. You weren't supposed to change the oil when you installed the Frantz filter. We did this on his '55 Olds and it darn sure looked like it worked.

[RalphM]

Just thought of something , my plasma cutter has a moisture filter added onto it, and it looks just like a roll of toilet paper as well.
Not the good stuff like Charmin, but the cheap stuff they used to give us when I was in the army, you know like 120 grit sandpaper.

[woodiewagon46]

I remember back in the '60s one of the guy's had one in his car. I guess he didn't use Charmin and the bottom inch of the roll was missing when he pulled it out. What a mess, paper sludge everywhere in the engine.

[Matt in Alameda]

The big advantage to the Frantz filter is that with the toilet paper it removed water, thus no acids and no sludge would form in the engine. I had one in a car waayyy back in 1968 that had 42,000 miles on it, installed the Frantz and I drove it another 82,000 miles without ever changing the oil ( part of the instructions was to not change oil) ...when I sold the car, the buyer broke the engine down as it was a 235 Chevy six and he was going to put in a V8....it was absolutely pristine inside. No sludge in the pan and everything was shiney new. It was VERY impressive. Matt in Alameda

[JSeery]

The Frantz may work, no idea, but a roll of paper in the original by-pass canister is most likely not going to do anything! Unless it is sealed some way to force oil through it the oil is just going to go around it like it wasn't even there.

[Admiral]

Originally Posted by JSeery

The Frantz may work, no idea, but a roll of paper in the original by-pass canister is most likely not going to do anything! Unless it is sealed some way to force oil through it the oil is just going to go around it like it wasn't even there.

Fascinating info about the Frantz filter in the thread. I'd never heard of this device before. However, the filter arrangement on this engine is most definitely not one of these; someone just stuffed a roll of TP in the canister. As you said JSeery, there's no way to seal the roll off in order to actually force oil through it. All I see this doing, aside from making a mess, is absorbing A LOT of oil.

[tubman]

If you think about how a Ford bypass filter works, this may not be so bad. The oil comes into the cartridge about 3/4 way up, and most of it will go to the bottom of the canister, where it will accumulate until it rises to the level of the standpipe, where it will go back to the crankcase. On doing this, it will probably go up through the toilet paper, which will filter out most of the contaminants. Not an ideal situation, but probably better than nothing.

[JSeery]

Won't even work a little bit!

[tubman]

Originally Posted by JSeery

Won't even work a little bit!

Can you explain the reasoning behind your statement?

[JSeery]

That's not how filtration works, that's not even how fluid flow works. The oil inters under pressure and finds the path of least resistance to the lower pressure exit. It would take force to get the fluid to travel through a filter or in this case the tissue. As long as there is a free path through the canister the fluid is going to take that path. The tissue would absorb oil until it became saturated and at that point all of the oil would by-pass it. Remember the inlet is .060, so as long as there is a pathway larger than that (and in this case the entire space around the top of the tissue) it is going to take that path. The only way to get the oil to pass through a filter is to have it tightly sealed so that through it is the only possible path. Filter material presents a fairly sizable resistance to fluid flow. This resistance is measurable, there is a difference between the inlet pressure and outlet pressure that you can see if you put a gauge on both sides. In the case of the by-pass filter all of the oil in the system does not have to pass through the filter material, but the filter resistance is still there and if the fluid can find a way around it, it will.

[miller91]

Well, the Frantz is a well known old accessory, seen them advertised in old magazines. Gotta say that toilet paper when soaked with anything is pretty impermeable. I think the Frantz started a sort of "urban legend" that all canister style bypass filters can accept a roll of toilet paper. Bypass filtration depends on flow, I am with JSeery on this. Modern diesels still use bypass and cartridge filters, the construction is practically identical to the original elements. Generally there are two styles available; pleated paper and "stacked disc" media. For instance the Fram C4 is pleated paper, the C4P is stacked disc media which is actually pretty good stuff and is what I use. Bypass oil systems actually work, as I said fleet trucking still uses this same technology, diesels produce sludge like the flatheads do so they, like the old canister filters did, clean a portion of the oil through a bypass filter eventually filtering all of it over time, (and in a shorter time than you think at cruising speeds). Sludge is an organic contaminant, stacked disc media loves to bond to and remove this material. Other damaging particulates are inorganic contaminants and can be removed very effectively via bypass, while full flow cartridge filters by their very nature (full-flowing) tend to allow smaller micron particles to pass through. Bottom line is that bypass canister filters work but not with no-flow toilet paper. While our old car's engines did not come with ideal oil filtration, it's not as bad as they are made out to be. The proper filter cartridges are cheap.

[Cecil/WV]

I have 2 Franz units on my shelf