Kelly Aerospace Oil Filter Alert

[jdhardin]

I received this from a friend the other day. He has a C-140 with an oil filter mod on his C-85-12. I couldn't figure out how to show the pictures, but they were dramatic.
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Or, how NOT to save $2.50!

Last year I had my Cessna 140 on display at a Cessna single engine vendor conference in the Citation service center. The Kelly Aerospace representative told me all the wonderful things about how their oil filter is far superior to any others, and it was less expensive.

So after I used up my stock of Champion filters, I put a Kelly filter on the 140. Bad decision. Very bad.

Only 2 flight hours later, I had a sudden drop in oil pressure to below minimum red line, and had to make a precautionary landing. Fortunately, I was within 5 minutes of my home field.

Investigation showed there was a 1.4" long curved piece of rubber stuck in the pressure regulating valve (see photo). It looked like a piece cut off an O-ring, but there are no O-rings in this engine that can get to the oil passages! Then more rubber was found in the screen, which is between the oil pump and filter. This stuff was mangled, and obviously had gone through the pump. The piece in the valve was nice and smooth.

The only way to get something into that part of the oil system is to introduce it at or downstream of the filter, and no part of the engine downstream of the filter has been opened for more than 600 hours. I check the filter and screen for contamination every time they are serviced and have never seen rubber before. So the source of the rubber had to be the filter itself. To add insult to injury, the wrenching hex on this filter was poorly welded and snapped off while trying to remove the filter!

On cutting open the filter, I discovered more very fine pieces of rubber (stuff small enough to pass through the screen) on the filter media. Close inspection shows that the center tube of the spool that holds the filter media was very sharp,and had cut off pieces of the seal that is between the tube and the filter base plate. These cut pieces were right at the filter outlet, and are not filtered but carried out directly into the oil distribution gallery of the engine, and right on to all the bearings, lifters, etc., and eventually on to the pressure regulating valve.

I think most people will agree the appropriate function of an oil filter is to REMOVE contamination from the oil, not to introduce it. Kelly Aerospace ads stress the importance of clean oil: "Oil is the life blood of an engine. Keep it clean with Kelly Aerospace Oil Filters...The ultimate protection for your engine!" Unfortunately, their filter directly introduced this poison to my engine's "life blood."

I now have an engine with an unknown amount of rubber contamination spread throughout the entire lubrication system. The only possible way to be 100% certain that all critical oil passages are not plugged is for a complete engine teardown and thorough cleaning, which seems to be an extreme price to pay for saving $2.50 on an oil filter.

Since this occurred, I have discovered there are other types of failures of these filters being reported (see FAA Service Difficulty Reports), and I of course regret my decision to try a different brand filter. I have contacted Kelly Aerospace with no response yet, and I have filed an FAA Service Difficulty Report on this incident.

I strongly recommend avoiding Kelly Aerospace oil filters. Personally, I will only use Champion filters from here on out.

Feel free to forward this to anyone who owns or maintains an airplane!

Phil Ciholas

N72951

[Nathan K. Hammond]

Damn, Phil is a good friend, hate to hear that! He actually gave me my first C140 ride in "Rosey."

JD, forward the email to me and I'll post the pictures. I'd like to really see them. Nathan_K_Hammond @ Hotmail.com

nkh

[joea]

Moved this to the Engine section where it should get more people viewing.

As well would like to see the photos. I have only the screen now and was thinking of putting a filter on my C85.

Thanks for the info!

Joe

[jdhardin]

Moved this to the Engine section where it should get more people viewing.

As well would like to see the photos. I have only the screen now and was thinking of putting a filter on my C85.

Thanks for the info!

Joe

Joe, since Nathan volunteered to post the photos, I'll forward them to him, but could one of you tell me how to post them?

[Nathan K. Hammond]

click on the pic for a larger version...



First pic is of the Internal seal,
second pic is a close-up os the damaged seal,
third pic shows a piece removed from the pressure regulator,
forth pic is rubber found in the oil SCREEN,
fifth pic shows rubber in the oil filter media,
last pic shows the sharp edge on the oil filter that cut the rubber seal.

Thanks Jay for forwarding the pics. There's a really good thread on how to post pics, it pretty much spells it out really good.
http://www.joea.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=602

I still use photobucket, and don't even worry about resizing pictures, I simply let photobucket do it (they have a max of 1meg I think and resize automatically.)

nkh

[Mnflyer]

Boy thats nasty, lets hope that its only one filter that was bad but the usual thing is that is run of them.

[Nathan K. Hammond]

It was a 48108 filter, so if you're running one, it might be pertinant to pull it off and cut it open. What really bothers me is the fact I removed the screen from my engine because I installed an oil filter. Never once did I think an oil filter would be the cause of contamination. Now I'm wishing I'd left the screen, since it was able to catch some trash.

Think I'll keep using Champion Filters!

nkh

[MikeB]

Ugh!! That's awful! . Have you contacted Kelly Aerospace regarding the filter problem? It appears you have it pretty well documented. I'm going to guess that they will insist you over torqued the filter installing it (normal procedure: put the blame on someone else).

It seems that if they use a seal at that point, the metal would be crimped.
Does a Champion use the same internal seal??


Mike Berg

[Ron Babos]

Nathan: I did a lot of research on filters before ending up with what I have now. The relief valves opens every time you start a cold engine. It's in the area of about 8 psi. Micronic filtration of most aircraft filters aren't great. They don't publish it, but my best guess is in the 25 micron range. They can let particals up to 300 microns through because the micron rating is not absolute, which means the media has varying size holes in it. 30 microns is around .00015. I ended up with a thing called PurePower, similar to it's clone Trufilter. It won't let anything larger than 30 microns through and the relief valve is set at 18-20 psi. When the oil is cold in the morning restriction can be seen on the gauge, as the hot idle pressure is 5psi higher than the cold pressure. You won't see that on an aircraft filter because the bypass will open. The bypass will never open on mine unless the pilots an idiot and takes off wilh cold oil, or he never services the filter. There's always a compromize in flow and filtration and the auto filters under 25 micron are too restrictive for aviation. 25 micron auto filters are termed racing filters and not recommened for every day drivers Still way better than a screen.
Bottom line is that you may have run some unfiltered oil through the engine when you first started it up until the oil heated up to around 100 or so, unless you followed my advice and preheated the oil for first run. The first hour with light oil is a good idea also. SAE 30 or so. Once the engine is broke in, (the first hour's a bitch) there's not much contamination in the oil so the small time frame the relief valve is open usually won't hurt anything. At this point the filter starts to shine. Screens on Continentals suck. Not just because they are coarse but most won't seal at the end inside the accessory case. My original screen had .015 gap at one part of the hole. That's because the hole is not round due to the machining technique applied.
Ron

[Nathan K. Hammond]

Mike, I called Phil (the victim) last night and talked to him about the whole filter failure. He tried talking with Kelly but nowhere with them. And to answer your question about Champion filters; YES they do have the same seal, but the quality of the metal is much better (no sharp edges to eat seals.)

Ron, no arguing about a filter being better than a screen, thats the ONLY reason I went with a -12 engine (for the oil filter pad.) But i didn't know the relief was set so low. My concern now is that I don't a screen, should the filter go Tango Uniform.

And FYI Ron; I did preheat for the first couple hours when I O/H'd it, but I didn't take your advise about welding supports on the oil tank. Guess what, I got a crack on the flange. D'oh! Maybe next time I'll listen up.

nkh

[Ron Babos]

Nathan: The screen won't help much as the only thing it will do now is take out some stuff before it goes to the filter if you're coming off the side of the -12 case. Plus you have two things to service. Now that I gave you the fear of relief valve, don't sweat it. Not all oil goes through unfiltered, just the amount in the pressure differnetial from one side of the element to the other. Give it a nice warm up before you blast off. That's why screens are so coarse. People proofing After seeing the Kelly pics, I think Champion would be a better choice. It seems the design needs some tweeking.
All this time I didn't think you listened to me. I had one crack on the original tank and the supports got welded on for the rebuild. They really leak , don't they? Eventally they will all crack without the supports. They came standard on the larger o-200 tanks.
Ron

[CptKelly]

Pard,
if I were you, I'd let my lawyer call Kelly. I'd ask for a new engine since it is very clear that their filter caused your engine to go un-airworthy.

Mike

[joea]

Would love to see what happened on this. I really agree and feel that a lawyer calling Kelly might get a lot more done.

[Nathan K. Hammond]

I talked to Phil after if happened, and he did call Kelly but nothing came of it. Phil's not the kind of person who pushes an issue, so I'm sure he let it go, but will never use a Kelly product and tells his friends the same. (This thread for example.)

On an ironic note; my father is the Chief Inspector at a composite repair station. They get a lot of Lancair's, Columbia's, and Cirrus aircraft because of too much airplane and too little pilot (the new Bonanza.) When Cirrus came out with the heated leading edges, aircraft were coming to the repair station with signs of heat damaged skins and spars, which was costing big bucks to fix. Long story short, Kelly is the manufactor of the heated leading edges, and really screwed of the installation and design.

So if anyone's should go after Kelly, it's the Doctor and Lawyer that spent $500k for an airplane that will melt with the flip of a switch.

nkh