saw this on ebay:
Porsche 987 Boxster Boxster S MAGNETIC OIL DRAIN PLUG :eBay Motors (item 360093421535 end time May-27-09 08:39:54 PDT)
was wondering if anyone has used magnetic oil drain plugs on their cars?
Porsche used to find magnetic drain plugs at least on some of the cars. My 944S2 had one. Never seen anything on it but a small bit of fuzz. Don't know if they stopped using them to save money or just because customers would freak about a tiny bit of fuzz.
Jeez Casual, you're full of questions today. Nobody on the forum has had any issues with Oil aside from the well-documented occasional white plume on start-up. There is no reason to install something like this.
I'd think long and hard about modifying anything on the drive-train with a part from e-bay. Buying chrome vents is one thing, playing with your engine for no tangible reason other than "I saw it being sold" is asking for trouble.
Siga Siga...........
Hey - Just Because You Drove Over a Concrete Block
, Ripped the Underside of Your Car to Shreds:wall: ($5,000+ Damage...) and to CAP It All - Your Neighbour:crazy: Damaged Your Fender YesterDay.......
You Should See The
Huge
Magnets - Mercedes/Maclaren Fit to Their Engines And GearBoxes (I Have an Engineer Friend - Who Works At Maclaren - Close to My Home)
My Friend Tells Me - They Regularly Find Gear Cogs on the Magnet.....!
Can't Harm Anything to Fit One.................
Looking Forward to Seeing You This Week - Please Let Me Know When You Are Coming Down.....
why not get a magnet for the oil filter, then at least you do not have to try get them little, oily fuzzies of the plug.
good point. a quick google search showed it's super popular (and cheap).
I have a magnetic drain plug. I got it on-line someplace (I just searched and can't find the place I got mine, but there are many others). I paid far less than that eBay auction. Plus, it has a hex head, so I can use a regular socket to remove the plug.
I've always used one. I've put one on my other cars as well. My 993 came with one in both the engine and transmission. I don't know why
Caymans
don't, perhaps because more and more parts are aluminum and there is less and less for the magnet to catch.
One more data point. My 1979 928 had a magnetic drain plug and I did always get some fuzzies in it.
Bought one. Just waiting for the next oil change to install it. Can't hurt.
I installed one during the very first oil change. I believe it is the best and easiest preventative maintenance a car owner can have. They are inexpensive and do a job that can be inspected at each oil change. It needs to be at the lowest point of the engine to take advantage of oil flow near the oil pick up and to continue working after the engine is turned off during the drain down. If it gets anything on it, it is working. What ever is magnetic that sticks to the magnet can't be good for the engine parts if they are suspended in the oil going to all parts of engine interior. It helps to reduce wear of engine parts.
Think about it logically. Cheap insurance!
casualsurfer:
You mistake my post as agression and elitism, that was by far not intended. My opening about your being full of questions was mostly because I responded to three new topics in different sub-groups you opened, I wasn't being witty about your inquiry. I never responded "do a search" and indeed did not imply you're new to anything.
Nevertheless, let me elaborate slightly further.
Firstly, there have been numerous oil-analysis threads that have all come up showing the car shines in terms of lubrication. There is a very complex internal system that deals with the oil and its conditioning, which is why we have such a phenomenally high oil service life. Whether or not this conditioning caters for loose ferrous metal or not I do not know, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Secondly, Karel correctly identified that race-engines very regularly use magnets to keep ferrous particles out of the lube, however you simply can not compare components designed to be used for a few thousand miles between rebuilds, which run at massive stresses with practically no run-in to an engine designed to last hundreds of thousands of miles. The steels are vastly different and they have very, very different rates of material loss. Also, they're much less likely to use aluminium, which is non-magnetic.
Particularly in the case of the drive-train, race cars have enormous shear hammered onto the faces of the gears when going over kurbs. That brief split-second when the car is air-born is abslolute death for the transmission, because immediately after it is a landing which will take the face of the gears from very low strain (spinning in air) to max strain (hard acceleration) within a tenth of a second. This strips a lot of material from the gear teeth, as Karel's friend from McMerc noted. We don't suffer from that.
I'm not advocating "Porsche can't do wrong" because that's pretentious and silly. There is literally nothing stopping them from using one from stock, however, except "it's really not needed". Nobody has come back with data from old oil showing ferrous build-up, ergo there is nothing to attract with a magnet. I'd rather keep the Porsche one than risk a possible engine claim later on being questioned.
Again, if I seemed insulting, apologies. It was not the intention.
PS.
Karel:
4 weeks. And I'm getting a CS as a replacement, all on her insurance!
The typical point of having a magnetic collector in a pressure fed and filtered oil system is to get a quick idea of what ferrous type debris is being generated. Capture efficiency of something like this tends to be low and the filter does a fine job of removing this and other debris from the system. Or at least if it's changed often enough not to be bypassing.
With as many electronic nannies as the Cayman has and the extended oil drain interval recommended I'm a little surprised that they don't have a change your filter it's bypassing message.
A magnetic collector is a bit more useful in keeping some bigger chunks out of the works in something like a manual transmission which is unfiltered. Though I suspect even then most ends up lying on the bottom of the casing.
A magnetic drain plug has got to be totally harmless. I doubt you'll see much of anything on it in a late-model Porsche engine (little material is ferrous), but if you can find one and you want one just do it. If you really want to scare yourself put one in the transaxle. I've used a magnetic plug on several other manual transmissions and after about 30K miles (my std drain interval) they look like they have a beard.
related alittle to this topic,
but I ordered from my Porsche dealer 3 drain plug crush washers for my CS . They charged me $3.06 each. unbelievable
Check out:
Porsche Cayman - Oil Circulation - Page 1
I guess you can argue they don't add much but it would appear you'll save by not having to replace the plug with every oil change.
I am preparing to do my first oil change - does any one use Pelican?
