Buick Straight Eight Air Cleaners?

[pkhammer]

Can anyone identify these air cleaners? I think some if not all are variations of Buick.

[Ben Bruce aka First Born]

2nd from top is 1950-1952 Super and Special, I would say.

 

  Ben

[Dan O]

These were used on differnt makes besides Buicks but I agree with Ben.

[B Jake Moran]

Related question - how do these clean the air coming in?  I know they are oil bath but when looking at them, it appears vacuum from the motor draws air in from the bottom of the "air cleaner" and it must go past a bath of oil which does what?  I am speaking of the 2 on the BOTTOM. 

 

The 2 on the top seem to be from the 50's when a modest improvement was made wherein the air came in a smaller opening, over the oil and onto the engine. 

 

None of these seem like they would truly trap the air particles you don't want in your engine. Pardon my ignorance but most of my Buicks were from 1964 to 1974, same with other brands.  From my generation, whether it's a furnace filter or a car filter, air dirt particles are trapped prior to entering the engine in an efficient manner.  

[Ben Bruce aka First Born]

Jake, I will try to answer.   The two top ones work the same.  The small 2 1/2 inch opening attaches to the carburetor.  The second one is the one I am most familiar with as it is what my 1950 uses [ used]. It is obviously on it's side.  The bottom pan has oil, about a half pint, in the bottom. The mesh sits down inside just above the oil. Looking closely, one can see the opening between the bottom and the top. The air enters here, passes down between pan [  Buick Shop Manual calls it a sump] and filter mesh, impinges on the oil and turns up through the mesh, coating the mesh with oil and depositing dirt.  Engine off, the oil drains back down ,taking the dirt along for the ride. And the sump DOES get dirty. 

 

  Ben

[kgreen]

The bottom two are very similar to the one I had on a 1940 Buick with the 248 cu in engine.

[EmTee]

My '38 doesn't have an oil sump.  It uses an oiled 'wool' element to catch dirt at the intake.  Following that, there is a baffled chamber that supposedly both muffles intake noise and also traps any remaining particles by forcing the air to abruptly change direction.  However, there's no that way I can see to empty the chamber...

[kgreen]

2 hours ago, EmTee said:

My '38 doesn't have an oil sump.  It uses an oiled 'wool' element to catch dirt at the intake.  Following that, there is a baffled chamber that supposedly both muffles intake noise and also traps any remaining particles by forcing the air to abruptly change direction.  However, there's no that way I can see to empty the chamber...

Also designed as a spark arrestor, believe it or not.

[B Jake Moran]

Thanks everyone.  I like to know these things.    It is kind of neat to know the vacuum "holds" the oil semi suspended, not bad engineering really, for the times.  A fellow could change out the oil as much as they wanted in theory.  

Edited November 17, 2022 by B Jake Moran (see edit history)

[Bloo]

On 11/14/2022 at 1:23 PM, B Jake Moran said:

and it must go past a bath of oil which does what? 

True oil bath air cleaners make the air change direction. The dust and dirt has mass. The air is forced to make a u-turn, and the heavier-than-air dirt particles continue in a straight line, right into the oil where they get stuck like flies in flypaper.

 

Edited November 18, 2022 by Bloo (see edit history)

[EmTee]

Lots of large trucks and heavy equipment still use oil bath air cleaners.  They are quire efficient at removing dust and can be serviced without having to purchase new filter media.  My wife's Equinox uses a cartridge-type (i.e., element only) oil filter instead of the usual 'spin-on'.  Maybe the the next improvement will be replacing paper element air filters with oil bath air cleaners...?

[dship]

My first car, a '56 Mercury 292ci, had an oil bath air cleaner.  Bought the used car in 1966 for $35.  Learned to drive a std shift in that car.

[kgreen]

Remember those big old Sears and Roebuck buildings that were built prior to WWII?  At least in the south, they used oil bath air filters in the buildings conditioned supply air. 

[NTX5467]

On 11/17/2022 at 5:20 PM, EmTee said:

Lots of large trucks and heavy equipment still use oil bath air cleaners.  They are quire efficient at removing dust and can be serviced without having to purchase new filter media.  My wife's Equinox uses a cartridge-type (i.e., element only) oil filter instead of the usual 'spin-on'.  Maybe the the next improvement will be replacing paper element air filters with oil bath air cleaners...?

The reason for the newer engines, sometimes, having cartridge oil filter elements is generally related to recycling of such.  When the oil filter is compressed, it is mostly the "paper" element that is squashed, whereas the spin-on includes metal in the mix, too.  Import brands have used the cartridge approach for decades, fwiw.

 

The cartridge will usually be messier to deal with, BUT with the cartridge removed, that might provide a clean place to pour in the fresh motor oil?   A place with a big enough hole to not have to worry about spills and such?  Then use an extractor to vacuum out the oil from the sump (if possible) and you have a complete "over the fender" oil change!

 

Just some thoughts,

NTX5467

Edited November 21, 2022 by NTX5467 (see edit history)

[EmTee]

I don't have any issue with cartridge oil filters - my '56 Chevy had one.  It does reduce waste, as only the filter media is discarded.  It also eliminates the oil that would otherwise be trapped inside the spin-on filter can.  The issue I have with my wife's Equinox is that the filter cap is buried under a wire harness and brackets that force me to use a universal joint with my 3/8" ratchet extension because there's no straight shot to the cover nut.  On the plus side, whereas I normally try to pre-fill the spin-on filter housing with oil to reduce the time needed to establish oil pressure, it looks like the 2.4 L engine in the Equinox is set up such that adding oil through the cam cover opening appears to 'automatically' fill the filter cavity with oil on its way to the crankcase.  It only takes a couple of seconds for the oil light to extinguish at startup following an oil change.

 

Edited November 21, 2022 by EmTee (see edit history)