Fixed Ops Journal - October 2019 - F21

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

Oil filters haven't changed much in a century

n 1959, auto mechanics used one of two
types of filters when they changed motor
oil: a spin-on type in a metal canister that
became popular in the mid-1950s, or
one with a removable filter element that fit inside a canister mounted on the engine.
Today, mechanics are called service technicians and nearly everything under the hood has
gone high-tech. But technicians use the same
spin-on oil filter or the same removable element, depending on the make and model of the
vehicle. Most nonpremium filters still use paper
to trap tiny particles floating in the oil.
The first automobiles generally didn't use
any oil filter. If they did, the filter had a crude
metal screen that wasn't effective. That
changed in 1923, when Ernest Sweetland and

George Greenhalgh patented one of the first
automotive oil filtration systems.
They called their system Purolator for "pure
oil later," according to a company history. The
early filters used a cloth weave; in 1946, the
company switched to a paper element.
In 1954, Jack Wicks and Paul Crenshaw,
founders of Wix Filters, patented the spin-on
oil filter, marketing it with the slogan "Twist of
the Wrist." The filter saved time and proved
less messy than the replaceable-element filter. Less than a decade later, almost all domestic passenger cars and many foreign vehicles
had adopted spin-on filters.
Though the shape of most of today's oil filters is
basically the same, some progress has been
made with the material used to filter oil. Synthet-

ic materials in premium filters can trap smaller
particles than cheaper paper-element filters.
It's not that inventors haven't thought of
modernizing oil service. In 2015, Castrol created a system that contains the oil and filter in
a replaceable cartridge. The Nexcel system
was tested with good results on Aston Martin's
Vulcan race car.
But Nexcel requires a lot of space in the engine bay, which means re-engineering under
the hood. Aston Martin spokesman Nathan
Hoyt says the automaker does not use Nexcel
on production vehicles.
The reusable Hubb oil filter (see main story)
does not require modifying the engine or the
rest of the vehicle.
- Richard Truett



FILTERS

continued from previous page

is repaired in time, could prevent catastrophic
engine damage.
The Hubb system includes a filter that is designed to be disassembled, cleaned and reinstalled on the engine. Instead of the paper element used in virtually all conventional oil filters, the Hubb filter uses stainless steel mesh
to capture particles in the oil.
Hubb says its technology captures most particles measuring 5 microns (the width of a human blood cell) and nearly all particles that
are 25 microns and larger (a human hair is between 50 and 75 microns). Most name-brand
replacement filters with paper elements capture some particles of 25 to 30 microns.
The Hubb filter also has a pair of pressure
differential valves that increase oil flow, regardless of oil temperature or engine speed
and load. Hubb says oil flows through the filter
five times faster than with conventional filters.
That helps improve engine lubrication, the
company says, especially during cold startups.
If a dealership buys Hubb's cleaning system,
a service technician unscrews the oil filter
from the engine, disassembles it - which
takes about a minute - and puts its four sections into a machine that uses an environmentally friendly solvent. After the cleaning,
the tech reinstalls the filter.
If the shop owns the filter but doesn't have
the cleaning machine, the tech removes the
dirty filter, installs a clean one and sends the
used filter back to Hubb for cleaning, at a cost
of $6 apiece. If the shop leases the filters and
doesn't own the cleaning machine, Hubb

RICHARD TRUETT

Used oil filters must be collected, handled and
recycled as hazardous waste.

charges $12 to clean gasoline filters and $25 to
clean diesel filters.

Cutting costs
The cost to a fleet operator for each oil service is usually between $40 and $70 a vehicle,
according to Motormindz, a consulting firm in
Troy, Mich., that works with automotive startup companies, including Hubb. That figure includes the costs of the oil, the new filter and
the labor of the tech who performs the service.
Some smaller fleet operators pay to have old
oil filters collected for recycling. By contrast,
high-volume shops that collect thousands of
gallons of used oil each month can avoid
charges by recyclers to collect the used filters,
which are heated to help drain the old oil.
Then the filters are crushed and their metal is
recycled. Recyclers also sell the used oil,
which is often used in asphalt.
Fleets pay roughly $4 apiece for conventional oil filters for a gasoline engine and $10 for
conventional filters for a diesel engine. By
contrast, Hubb charges $45 for each reusable

filter used on a gasoline engine and $110 for
each filter used on a diesel.
It costs about $1 to clean a Hubb filter in the
larger of two Hubb cleaning machines, which
sells for $650. After about the 12th oil service
on a vehicle, Hubb calculates, its filter has
paid for itself.
A fleet also can save when the Hubb filter extends the oil change interval, the company
says. Blackstone Laboratories, of Fort Wayne,
Ind., recently analyzed the used oil from a
fleet of California Ford Police Interceptors
with 3.7-liter engines using Hubb filters. The
lab's report, provided by Hubb, concludes that
the normal oil change interval of 4,000 miles
can be extended to 6,000 miles based on the
duty cycle of the police cruisers.
Fleet managers for the government in Wake
County, N.C., tested Hubb filters for a year before switching 324 of its roughly 1,000 fleet vehicles, such as ambulances and vans, in 2018.
The county hired a second lab to test the oil.
Its results were nearly identical to those of the
Blackstone report.
That outcome convinced the county it was
safe to extend oil-change intervals for its vehicles from 5,000 to 10,000 miles. That change
kept thousands of traditional oil filters out of
the recycling barrel and cut the county's annual oil consumption by thousands of gallons,
officials say.
The county estimates it could save as much
as $70,000 a year on oil costs by switching 90
percent of its fleet to Hubb filters.
Hubb, which installed its first filter about a
decade ago, now has more than 8,000 oil filters in service on fleet vehicles, but none on
consumer vehicles. 

OCTOBER 2019

PAGE 21

Fixed Ops Journal - October 2019

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