Blown Off Oil Filter

[Yakoozaz]

Hi All,

I recently put in my car for it's full service at my car dealership (who will remain anonymous for now) and along requested them to do an install of 2 gauges being oil temp & pressure since the service was going to do the oil change anyway.

Car service done, car gauges installed, car turns on, gauges go well everything is sweet, off I go down the road. About 4k's down the road in traffic (Going very slowly) I hear a "Pop" sound that sounded like I had driven over something but I felt no force from the steering wheel or movement in the car. I check my dash to see my Oil light on, I check my gauges to see oil pressure had dropped down to 0. I get the hell off the main road and onto a side street. Jump out the car and duck under the car to see oil EVERYWHERE, pop the hood and found my oil filter sitter there on the steering column and the sandwich plate dangling there by it's wires along with alot more oil everywhere.

I lift out the oil filter after it had cooled down and found the screw the connects the oil filter and plate to the engine had a good 1-2mm piece of metal still in the thread of the screw that it had ripped off from the engine bay.

I call up the dealership who calls up his engineers who will be taking another look at it tomorrow. But for now, any ideas on what caused this would be great? Faulty parts, faulty engineer install, worn out threads? Anything and everything would be great to know.

I was able to reattach the oil filter itself without the plate, the dealership guy was kind enough to bring me some oil, filled her up and is now waiting back at the dealership's shop to inspection tomorrow.

Before the "PoP!";

Car - Nissan Skyline R33 GTS-T 1996

Gauges - Autogauge Oil and Pressure + Sandwich Plate

Oil pressure - 20 PSI on idle, 60-80 PSI in rev range of around 2000-3000 (was in traffic)

Oil Temp - Still very low as the car was only on for about 10mins (was able to move the oil filter not to long after stopped without it being to hot)

Full car service was done before the gauges.

After the "PoP!";

Bolt with metal still inside

Plate Dangling after pop

Some of the wiring

Plate

More wiring

Oil Filter engine bay with part of the thread gone.

[Simon-S14]

do nothing more and dont drive or start the car.

insist that the dealership have the car picked up via flat bed tow, and fix their bollocks up at THEIR cost!

thats some seriously dodgy shit, even if it was a part failure and not a workmanship issue, the workshop still has to stand by the issue and warrenty it.

you'll be lucky if there is no spun bearings....

[Fry_33]

This looks exactly the same as what happened to my mate. Looks like the same sandwich plate too.

The reason this has happened is that the bronze coloured adaptor has been overtightened. As it is tightened it tries to squash the sandwich plate but can't, obivously the next weakest point will go. Unfotunately this is the factory thread that the oil filter attaches to.

It is easily solved though as the oil filter thread and flange is actually bolted to the block and not part of it. You should be able to pick one up from a wreckers etc. It is a bit of a pain to swap it over I think but it shouldn't have caused any damage to the engine. My mates one came off at full boost in second gear. As soon as we heard it blast off and looked in the rear view mirror the engine was shut off.

I think he may have ended up getting another sandwich plate but I will try and confirm that.

Good Luck.

Edited March 12, 2008 by Fry_33

[H@ME]

i agree with simon that you should defintaly let the workshop/dealership deal with the problem at hand as whatever actions they took resulted in your problem.

[RRob]

Did you supply the adapter plate?

Can't blame them then if china failed.

[r32woohoo]

But the sandwich plate had nothing to do with it

Like Fry 33 said, it looks to have been overtightened by the workshop and snapped the thread under pressure

[2gceffy]

maybe get a new fresh engine out of it if its damaged, its all on there head they did the work

[RaZ_TuRbO]

i don't have no idea why people over tighten oil filters? (

[Chi100188]

lol this happened to me but my engines ok and the oil filter still screws on but aye i knew i shoudla bought the Greddy one lol im never goign to buy china again

[BHDave]

The issue is actually with the adapter, more so than the over tightening. You can see it only has about 2 turns on there which is no where near enough when you tighten it up as all the strain is on the last 4-5mm of the thread, rather than over 15-20mm.

You can see how much thread is left, more than enough to still get an oil filter on there from what you've said.

They should have picked that it wasn't right and not done it in the first place. I know of guys on other forums who immediately picked up this issue when installing other china oil products, and they aren't professionals.

Do not reinstall that sandwich plate, it's rubbish.

[Chi100188]

if you do choose to install a sandwich plate go the Greddy one...maybe like 3 times more expensive but think about ur engine hehe as said in above post.....these sandwich plates are basically rubbish

[Yakoozaz]

I'm more then happy to invest in a greddy sandwich plate, but with 2mm (or two turns) of thread gone, will I still run into trouble?

[zebra]

I had the exact same thing happen to me (funny thing is the sandwich plates looks identical to the one I tried).....luckily it happened as I was installing it.

I was able to screw the filter back on with out the sandwich plate. and just bought a relocation kit and oil cooler.

The kit has the threads for gauge senders where the Oil filter attaches too.

And with the price of oil cooler/relocation kits these days its well worth it.

ANdrew

[Fry_33]

i don't have no idea why people over tighten oil filters? (

In this case it is not a case of overtightening the filter. You need the adaptor to be fairly tight otherwise every time you take the filter off the adaptor will come with it and make extra mess. I think the main problem with this kit is the bronze adaptor. I think the machining of them would probably be to the correct specs but they must coat the metal in the bronze material. Just to get my mates oil filter to screw on properly we needed to run the thread over a wire brush on a bench grinder. We should have stopped there but hindsight is a MF and you don't always think about these things when you are doing the job.

From memory there was enough thread on this adaptor but the overtightening of it literally tears the standard oil filter mounting thread apart as it must be a weaker metal.

I think my mate was able to screw a filter onto what was left of the standard thread, slam in some oil and drive it to a close workshop.

Unfortunately the sandwich plates appear to be one of those items which fall into the 'you get what you pay for category'.

Edited March 13, 2008 by Fry_33

[Yakoozaz]

Thanks for everyone's input, I got myself a Greddy Filter and got it on.

One quick question though, what kind of PSI should be running through when you doing around 4000rpm.. and what is the MAX psi I should be seeing?

[D_Stirls]

As people have said it's not the fault of the workshop because you provided the part that caused the failure. When i installed mine i found the same problem with one kit so i order another kit that was also a cheapy and that one had a longer adapter fitting. I'm in the process of removing the sandwich plate and installing a removal block that completely removes the oil filter assembly and then remote mounting the filter. The SR boys have been doing it this way for quite a while because of the problem that you encountered with the snapping of the cast oil filter fitting.

Here's a picture of the SR one, my brother (GROWLY Custom Machining) and i designed the one for my CA18 and made it on his CNC machine centre because no one in the world made them and it'll be finished this Sunday (just have to cut the o-ring grove).

SR BRACKET

CA BRACKET

Edited April 6, 2008 by D_stirls

[mark_sudakov]

Shit i just bought an autogauge oil pressure gauge including the sandwich plate too from Just Jap. Is there anyone else that has this combo installed without a problem? Whats a good brand sandwich plate to get? Greddy, the only one?

[rinmak]

The sandwich plate is probably fine you just need the thread on the bronze adapter to be longer/deeper. A fittings shop like enzed might be able to match something up that will work for you but I wouldnt bet on it.

But to be safe I would just get a trust/grex kit. Just installed one the other day on my 25 and cannot fault it.

Edited July 7, 2008 by rinmak

[mark_sudakov]

But to be safe I would just get a trust/grex kit. Just installed one the other day on my 25 and cannot fault it.

Any idea who sells them and how much? Also how much do filter relocation kits cost?

[rinmak]

Greenline.jp

Cant be bothered checking how much $$$ they are but the cheapest you will find them brand new is via greenline in my opinion