Its not a tapping noise, more of a loud noise. I finally got in touch with a mechanic in his "60's" and feel a little relieved now. Something about the frigid weather has an effect on the fan clutch is what he tells me. Now that I think about it thats exactly what it sounds like. This has never been an issue until the the majority of the country is in a deep freeze with my truck facing right into it parked outside. Does anyone else agree with this?

Does anyone happened to have the link to the discussion you guys had on the fram oil filters? I'll be taking that off this weekend.

Thanks again!

 

use the handy search feature.. Search "orange can of death" that should do it.

 

thanks jethat, I have found plenty of short posts about fram filters, nothing really in depth, I will try that, and thank you Sir!

 

Slick 50 at one time was a base mineral oil with a finely ground dose of teflon that was suppose to burnish itself on moving parts thereby reducing friction. Problem was that most of the teflon was being filtered out of the oil. The particulates that did escape the filter were notorious for stacking up at the corners of oil journals causing an oil starvation condition. Since Royal Shell now owns it, I have no idea what the formulation is but DuPonts stand is that teflon will not work in this situation. Even blocks that were teflon treated by normal means showed no decrease in friction and ring packs would not seat against it causing oil consumption issues.

Prolong has a long history of lawsuits. It's basically a chlorinated parrafinic. It works by the chlorine reacting with any fatty substances in the base oil. If you put Clorox on your hands, notice how slick your hands are. That's because the chlorine in the Clorox has broken down the fatty tissues in your hands causing it to feel slick. Problem with any chlorinated oil additives is that it can and often does create acids- hydrochloric acid to be exact. The acids can overwhelm the base materials in the oils that would normally neutralize the usual combustion acids, and corrosion will occur with damage. NEVER use any chlorinated anything in your oil.

Marvel Mystery oil is a napthenic oil. For words easier for you to understand, it is a solvent. By MSDS it is about 70-80% napthenic oil, 10-20% mineral spirits, and 1% or less chlorinated hydrocarbons. It's been around a long time when straight weight oils were common of mostly 30 viscosity and heavier. Remember, leaded fuels were the fuel of the day and engine life was short. There was no PCV system to vacuum moisture from an engine, just a down draft pipe that sucked air out of the engine at speed. Sludge was a problem and MMO worked for those engines by cleaning the crap out. Then when we got the PCV systems, unleaded fuels started coming online. With the lead removed, engine life was almost doubled over night. About that same time we started seeing multi viscosity oils that were loaded with polymers. The polymers would condense out and leave sludge. Again, MMO helped to removed these deposits as it is a solvent. Now we have ultra clean fuel that doesn't generate near the deposits or the combustibles that contaminate the oil so that has eliminated some of the sludge issues. We now have oils that are formulated to handle any excess water or moisture in the oil, especially the GF-5 oils, that doesn't allow the particulates to settle out as sludge. We also have stronger detergents to keep the engine clean and incredibly pure base stocks. The use of polymers has greatly been reduced and the VI spread is now achieved via a base oil with a higher Viscosity Index. So we don't really have a NEED for anything like MMO unless the owner neglects the engine, has short drive cycles, or is having issues with that he is not addressing. Otherwise, there isn't much reason for sludge to form in any of the modern engines.
Hope that's helpful.

 

Labnerd, that took some time to type that. Motocraft doesn't produce their own oil, so who do they have to do it for them? Is the motocraft filter, really just a purolater?

I will by the motocraft regardless after this thread.

Thanks for the post

 

Dont know who makes the mc oil filter but, its all ive ever used with no problems and only ~$4-5 at wal-mart.

 

Not really

Conoco-Phillips and Excelda. The base oil is a white based stock that is acid washed and is ultra pure. It's renown world wide for being the best GP III available. Motorcraft blended oil is about 60% Gp III in the proprietary formulation. In my opinion, it's among the best oil out there and considering the price, it's the best bargain you'll ever buy for your engine.

No, but the construction is quite similar. You'll find that Motorcraft oil filters are made by Purolator, Champion, and a few others but to Fords exacting specifications. Most factory installed Motorcraft filters are from Champion.

 

Thank you again for your input. I took the time to research FRam Filters and wow... you guys were not kidding. Isn't there some sort of agency that makes companies adhere to some sort of quality control? Its crazy that it can ruin your investment. It would be different if people knew they were buying the cheapest thing on the market but there are plenty of people like me that didn't know. Fram has been around as long as I can remember.

http://minimopar.knizefamily.net/oil...ence.html#fram

 

405, the post of these filters has been on the net for a number of years. It tells you nothing about the filters ability to perform function at all. One filter may have more media but in reality do a poor job of filtering if the media allows more particulates to pass. A lot of the folks here bad mouth the card board end caps. If assembled correctly, it's not an issue. With all of the testing and data generated there isn't a decent test by SAE or any other testing organization for accurately telling you anything about a filter. Yeah, there are tests with criteria to follow to get an empirical answer. But the test is flawed. No where in the criteria is there a temperature of the test fluid, exact pressure of the test fluid, viscosity of the test fluid, base materials of the test fluid, etc. The test pretty much says to put glass beads of a known size and amount in any fluid, run it thru the filter and then determine what came out the other side. Not a very accurate test. You might see what is called a Beta ratio which is pretty much the above test. It's fairly meaningless data. If you want what is best for your engine, you need to know that all oil filters are a compromise. You can get much better filtration but at the cost of flow. You can get more flow but at the cost of filtration. So far, there are no medias that do both good. Ford uses and labels their filter of choice and call it Motorcraft. Works for me.

 

Well I picked up a motocraft filter at O'Reilly because valvoline oil change didn't have them. I wasn't about to lay on the cold ground and change the oil and filter so I had it done. I felt a bit like a paranoid schizophrenic immediately getting that filter off but its done now, lol.

I remember why I dont take my truck to oil change places to get the oil changed. I saved to old oil filter and I am going to take it apart this weekend and have a look in there.

Phillip