Huntington Beach Vehicle Maintenance Facility Lifetime Oil Filters and Fuel Filters
The Huntington Beach Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF) has an ongoing program to replace disposable oil filters and fuel filters with Lifetime filters on vehicles serviced at this facility. The VMF plans to continue replacing disposable filters until all vehicles are equipped with lifetime filters.
The Lifetime filter is a cartridge filter composed of a stainless-steel filter screen element and is reusable for the life of any vehicle or engine. These lifetime filters are able to filter out 22-micron particles compared to disposable spin-on paper filters that only remove 84-micron particles. Reduced pore size filtering results in generally cleaner oil, which is thought to help extend the life of the engine. The lifetime filters have a drain plug and removable cap to facilitate servicing and to allow easy cleaning of the filter element. Filters are serviced by removing the oil or fuel element, cleaning it in the Hydroblast parts washer (see page 5) drying it and reinstalling it on the engine.
Although lifetime filters require additional labor hours for routine oil filter changes because of cleaning time there is no impact on labor hours because (1) no filters are accumulated, crushed or disposed of and (2) the Hydroblast parts washer allows employees to do other work while the filter is cleaned. No malfunctions or problems have been encountered using these filters at the Huntington Beach VMF. Besides the improved filtering efficiency, parts inventory is reduced, the amount of recyclable filter accumulation is reduced and work room floor space is increased. |