First Automobile to come with oil filter?

[DNC]

Hi friends, What was the first car to come equipped (optional and standard) with an oil filter? This question does not apply to aftermarket application. Thank you.

Edited August 12, 2013 by DNC (see edit history)

[Restorer32]

Packard had oil filters standard in 1931 but I'm sure there are earlier examples.

[ply33]

Carl Breer claimed in his autobiography that the '24 Chrysler was the first car fitted with an oil filter, made by Purolator. Plymouth had oil filters standard from '28 through at least '34, sometime in the '30s they made the filter optional on the lower priced trim level.

[Ivan Saxton]

1927 Cadillac 314B and 314 C have a cartridge oil filter, but I doubt you could find a good functional one today. It is probable that 1926 314A used the same. I had some war surplus filters in a black aluminium case which I used when I ran my 314B phaeton as an everyday car in the early 1960s. I supposed these bypass fiters must have done some good, but you could not tell when they were blocked without making a mess.

The earliest full flow filter I have seen or heard of is on the 1911 4 cylinder Type 38 Napier which I am restoring now when other people or urgencies do not interrupt me. You unscrew a big plug with a gasket flange, and you can lift the filter out to empty and wash it. It is a cast bronze item with brass gauze, which is good enough only to catch large debris. There is an oil pressure gauge and an adjustable oil pressure relief valve. The crankshaft is fully drilled with feed only to the front and rear main bearings. As you would expect, there was a lot of rubbish in the internal oilways of the crankshaft.

I had only the crankshaft and conrods of a 1910 Type 31 engine, because there had been two Napiers dismantled and discarded on the same farm. (Nothing else remained of the engine). I cannot remember now whether the crankshaft was drilled, but it was a much lighter crank with smaller bearing journals for the same engine displacement. I gave these to Ken Watson from Cootamundra NSW, who was restoring a 1910 Jarrott, which was a type 31 Napier differently named. Obviously the exclusive agreement for S F Edge to accept and market all the cars that Napier built was a rather porous contract. (Huttons were made too, but of different design than any Napier.) There is a book "Men and Machines" by Wilson and Reader which can be found in internet book merchants on Napiers, grandfather David, son James, and grandson Montagu, and their company. David moved to London from Scotland early in the Industrial Revolution, and he worked for or was apprenticed to Henry Maudslay, the inventor of the lathe, for about a year before starting his own business. Napiers were extraordinary inventors, and quite eccentric.

[Rusty_OToole]

If you have a sealed bypass filter you can tell if it is working or full by the temperature. When it is plugged full oil will stop circulating and it will not get hot.

The ones I am familiar with were supposed to be replaced every 5000 miles. But as they are so hard to come by, I would not throw one away until its usefulness was exhausted. On today's paved roads, under favorable conditions it might go 10000 or more.

[Guest prs519]

Speaking of eccentric. Ivan, you are the finest eccentric I have ever read!