Oil screen, oil sump plate questions (mostly philosophical)
Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2020 3:56 pm
I was replacing the oil sump gaskets and inspecting the oil screen on my 1600 DP, and the following questions occurred to me:
1. Now that I'm running an oil filter (and have been for the last 40k miles on this engine), is the oil screen still necessary? Every time I've pulled the screen on an engine equipped with an oil filter (and that's been the case on my last two buses), it's been totally spotless. I figure that the only thing I'd be concerned with is if I saw metal filings in it, signifying that the engine has repurposed itself as a machine shop, but all that would have been caught by the filter, right?
2. What's the deal now with those "acorn" nuts that retain the sump plate? Back when I was a sprout in the '70s, doing my first oil change, I went to the dealership and asked for one of those oil screen gasket kits, with the seven copper washers. The parts guy handed me the kit, along with six nuts. "I already have the nuts," I said. "Are they the acorn nuts?" he asked. I said "Yes."
"Throw 'em out," he said. "They're the cause of more busted studs than anything." He insisted that VW policy (at least at his dealership ... I didn't know whether the order came from VW itself) was to replace those nuts with conventional ones. So I bought the new nuts and used them on every engine I rebuilt. But now I have an engine built by one of the most reputable people around, and it has the acorn nuts. Was the parts guy bullshitting me? Or was there once something suspicious about those acorn nuts?
1. Now that I'm running an oil filter (and have been for the last 40k miles on this engine), is the oil screen still necessary? Every time I've pulled the screen on an engine equipped with an oil filter (and that's been the case on my last two buses), it's been totally spotless. I figure that the only thing I'd be concerned with is if I saw metal filings in it, signifying that the engine has repurposed itself as a machine shop, but all that would have been caught by the filter, right?
2. What's the deal now with those "acorn" nuts that retain the sump plate? Back when I was a sprout in the '70s, doing my first oil change, I went to the dealership and asked for one of those oil screen gasket kits, with the seven copper washers. The parts guy handed me the kit, along with six nuts. "I already have the nuts," I said. "Are they the acorn nuts?" he asked. I said "Yes."
"Throw 'em out," he said. "They're the cause of more busted studs than anything." He insisted that VW policy (at least at his dealership ... I didn't know whether the order came from VW itself) was to replace those nuts with conventional ones. So I bought the new nuts and used them on every engine I rebuilt. But now I have an engine built by one of the most reputable people around, and it has the acorn nuts. Was the parts guy bullshitting me? Or was there once something suspicious about those acorn nuts?