I changed the oil and filter on my 88 60s.

When I started it up the light would not go out, no leaks apparent.

I took the new filter off, and put the old one back on and it was fine. The oil light went out straight away.

Does anyone know what this is all about?
Was my new filter a faulty filter?

I checked the Oil Filter book.

The one I took off was a Ryco Z88a
The new one was a Ryco Z88.
The only difference in the book is the Z88a is longer.


Thanks for any comments.

Maybe because its a slightly larger filter, ergo holding more oil, the car thinks there isnt enough pressure??? Just a guess.

I have two suggestions, neither of which will help:

1) Put more oil in the engine -> The more oil in the same space = higher pressure = problem solved.

2) Draw on a letter "a" on the oil filter to trick the engine into thinking that it is the same sort of oil filter as the original one.

Let us know how you get on

The old filter would have retained most of its oil - compare the weight of an old filter with that of a new one - and therefore, the pump was able to re-fill the old filter but not the new empty filter (for some reason, see below).

For next time, you might like to consider the Fram PH4562 - my preferred choice for that engine plus many other FIATs and my 164s - from SuperCheap rather than Repco It's smaller than the Ryco filters, and I'd rather trust Fram than Ryco, for some unjustified reason. Well, maybe not entirely unjustified. Ryco air filters are sometimes very roughly made; cut apart their oil filters and you tend to see the same irregular element spacing, and just less filtering paper than you might expect. Cut apart a Fram filter and it looks high-quality - the element is dense and consistent. That's just my viewpoint, I suggest you don't take my word for it and instead have a look yourself

I think smaller oil filters are a good idea - less for the pump to re-fill when the engine starts - I notice the trend over the years has been for manufacturers to fit smaller filters, yet the service intervals have been increasing. As noted, the amount of filtering media doesn't necessary relate to the size of the casing.

I should point out that a certain supplier in the business (you'll know who I'm talking about) NEVER uses Fram or Ryco filters; he insists on importing UFI (original-equipment-manufacturer) filters from Italy, as fitted by FIAT originally but without the FIAT branding. So if you want 'genuine', there's always that option - and probably costs a lot less than you think.

So - it sounds like the oil pump lost its prime and was sucking air, not oil. I wonder if you did something I did once - did you fire compressed air into the filter spigot, to help drain the old oil? That'll cause the pump to lose prime.

Sometimes you have to be a little brutal and after five seconds of idling with the light on, gently increase the revs to about 3000 or so (no load on the engine of course). If that doesn't make the light go out, then switch off; something must really be wrong. This particularly applies to a freshly-rebuilt engine where the oil pump may be empty. Some people like to pack the pump gears with lithium grease, so as to create a strong suction straight away.

Funny how, like you, I've been changing engine oil for many years - I guess half my life - but what I've discovered relatively recently, while playing around, is that you CAN effectively fill the filter with oil before putting it on the engine, even if it's fitted horizontally. After noticing the weight difference between old and new, I decided to see just how much oil you can get into a filter. What you do is (obviously) sit it with the hole upright, and pour oil into it, brim-full. The oil level then slowly sinks as the oil soaks through the element. You'll find it a little below half-full after 30 seconds or so. Then you can brim-fill it again, it sinks to three-quarters full, and so on. I'm sure the filling rate could be proven by a differential equation, like the alcohol concentration of a punch bowl that's refilled only with neat Vodka (does anyone else remember being baffled by those questions?), but let us just resign ourselves to the fact that it may never actually be quite brim-full.

The point is, if you fit about half a litre of oil into the filter, not much will actually come out when you spin it onto the engine (it might seem like a lot, but it will only be a tablespoon or so) and the engine will get oil pressure much faster, usually within a second. I now do this for all the engines I change the oil on (except BMW, since they don't have spin-on filters).

By the way, if the oil is really dirty, I put the drain plug back in once the oil's drained. I leave the filter in place, and I put in about 2L of some sort of cheap 20W40 oil from The Warehouse - doesn't need to be a full fill. I run the engine for a few minutes (it should still be hot). Then I drain that 'quick oil flush' out, and then replace the filter. While possibly a waste of good oil (which I do take to recycling, I'd like to point out ), I think it's a cheap and effective way to at least dilute the dirty oil normally left trapped in the engine. Otherwise, the new oil quickly gets a bit less 'new' than you might have hoped... which probably compromises the performance of the oil.

-Alex

I had exactly the same problem with my Uno turbo once. I fitted a nice new UFI filter, started it up and there was no oil pressure. I swapped it back with the old filter, also a UFI, fired it up to see normal oil pressure.

I specially got in UFI filters for my Fiats but I also stocked Ryco in the workshop. I had no choice but to fit a Z88 to get the job done and it fired up fine with oil pressure. Go figure!

I kept the "dud" filter to try on something else at a later date just to see what would happen. Well when I did try it on another car it also had no oil pressure. Very weird, I can't explain it. I just chucked it out and forgot about it. I still use UFI and have never found that again.

For the record Ryco filters are ok. Z88 has an anti drain valve where the OE and UFI filter does not. I know Americans seem to really rubbish anything from Fram.

Thanks people.

Good reading. AlexGS, no I never used compressed air, this car was only about 1000km overdue according to the stcker. So I guess oil quality was not too bad. When I took the new oil filter off it was full of oil. Weird I say. Yes I had left it idling for quite a few minutes. Longer than I have ever done before waiting for the light to go out. I did raise the revs to about 2-3000, and didn't like the sound. At this stage the car was up on ramps in the front, so I put it back on the ground. No difference.

that is when I put the old filter back on and and everything was good. I will try another new one today. This time a Repco one that I have here. I am to town so I will get another one too.

And yes I had lots of oil in it, nearly 4 litres, it was over full on the dipstick before I swapped out the filter.

Good idea on a car with real dodgy oil AlexGS.

Tried another new one and all is good. And even better, Repco want the dodgy new one back and will swop it for me. They want to send it back and get it checked. They said do not put it on another vehicle to try it. I could see he was worried about damage to an engine. All his questions were about that. He also told me that in the 3 years he has been there he has only seen 2 faulty filters which had splits. I have only ever known 1 other filter to fail in 40 years of messing with cars, including when I was a motor mechanic. That one split, my son was driving from Invercargill to Christchurch to catch the plane to fly to Aust, to watch the Melbourne Grand Prix. The Filter company were excellent. Paid for everything, including steam cleaning the mess in the engine bay and paying for parking at the airport. He had to leave it there as he was running real late to catch the plane after all the drama of the filter splitting while he was driving.

About 3 years ago Ryco had a bad run of filters. They were splitting at the seam. I saw a few back. But generally they are good