Oil Filter Magnets

Just left a local offroad shop and the mechanic told me the cheapest mod to save your engine is placing a coaster shaped magnet on top of you oil filter. Has anyone heard this?

 

If i was to buy one, i would probalby buy the the one shown in the 2nd link.
There is this type: http://www.oilfiltermagnets.com/

and this type: http://www.filtermag.com/

 

It couldn't imagine it making that much of a difference, considering there is either a magnet sitting in the bottom of your oil pan or it is intergrated in the oil drain plug.

 

How does a magnet make your engine "Burn fuel more efficiently" ??? (as stated in the ad)

 

Everybody's trying to make a buck.

 

i dont know but, that sounds like b/s to me.....
the only thing i CAN see it doing is helping out by slightly cleaning the oil of contaminants.....

 

It's the same idea as having a magnetic drain plug. It'll collect the metallic particles out of your oil. Neat idea putting it on the oil filter...but it won't give you all the benefits they're claiming.

Besides that.... Personally - the drain plug idea is much better. When you change your oil, you can SEE how much metallic particles are in the oil.

If your engine is puking metallic particles on a regular basis (after full break-in), then you've got some problems.

 

Interesting . . . I just searched filtermag.com and the website didn't even find a magnet for an 08.

 

Do the Tacos have a magnetic drain plug?

I just acquired (the bank owns) a '09 and was wondering about that but didn't want to do an oil change just to find out.

 

If oil filter magnets are such a great idea, wonder how come none of the filter manufacturers haven't built them into their product? Can't cost too much for them to get some magnets, and it would make a great marketing gimmick.

 

Long time back I was on a now defunct Corolla forum. Peeps there were swearing by a mod that involved running welding cable between the front and rear of the engine block, then to the battery. IIRC they called it the "ground mod". They were swearing it did everything from butter their toast in the morning to raising their gas mileage 300 percent.

Quieted them right down when I said Toyota spends millions of dollars figuring out ways to make their engines more fuel efficient, why would they not put 5 bucks worth of cable under the hood if they could raise the price of the car 500 bucks for being able to claim incredible gas mileage.

Nobody had an answer...

 

I'm sure some of them may be, but mine is not. Just changed the oil 3 days ago and I tried to hang it off the bottom of the oil pan while it was draining. Decided to go for synthetic now, of course.

 

After the first oil change, I'd be concerned to find any filings, etc, stuck on my drain plug, but I'd sure prefer to see it there than hidden inside a filter.

Now, if I did think a magnetic filter made sense I'd buy a couple rare earth magnets and stick them to the filter. This would magnetize the filter good enough. And it would cost maybe fifty cents.

 

Get yourself a dead hard drive and yank the magnets out of it. Those little things are so strong if you stick it to the front of your 'fridge you have to slide it to the side to get it off.

Freebies!

 

Yep, pretty sure.

 

One other possible, (not likely, but possible), pitfall of the filter magnets is what could happen if the band was removed from the filter for any reason, whether by accident or otherwise, and there were metal particles in the filter?

 

Wow, Good Point!!
and since some filters aren't too easy to remove, you would have to move around the band or actually remove it. to get a good grip on the filter.