Forum

[73a]

PLease could I have your thoughts on fitting a spin on oil filter to my 350 bullet , the benefits I see and have been informed of are cooling , filtration and addition oil capacity.
where I could source a remote oil filter housing as our hosts have nothing listed.
Cheers ng

[John-M]

If you are referring to the classic G2 type Bullet, the oil filter housing is part of the timing case and there is no obvious point to plumb in a remote filter.
The standard filter is a rather pathetic cloth affair, but no one has come up with a better one that I know of.
The lean burn engine is a similar design to the G2, but uses a modern filter, I have no idea if they fit the old engine, or more importantly, if it would cause any oil starvation issues.
Your best bet is to use a good spec oil and change it regularly.

[stinkwheel]

Unecessay to be fair. Cooling is not an issue, they run too cold as standard. They hold way more oil than they need too. I always cut my old sock filters open and they catch anything you'd need them to. So at least two of the quoted advantages are actually disadvantages (cooling and volume). If you were running a pre-unit triumph/BSA or an Ural, then yes, with you all the way, but not a bullet.

It's said you can't polish a turd but you can roll one in glitter. A paper element filter on a pre-unit bullet counts as the latter. My 350 did about 90k miles before catastrophically blowing up and the failure was nothing at all to do with excessive wear due to inadequate oil filtration, it was a failure of a valve. I am NOT gentle with my bullets nor am I anal about oil changes. Most bikes of that era of design had no filter at all.

[73a]

Thanks for the replies , I wasnt aware the bikes were running cool . Surely adding modern filtration to a very basic oil system can only aid to catch those items not seen when you cut open the the cloth filter !
I will keep looking for a remote filter for my bullets and post a picture if successful.
Thanks ng

[windmill john]

Stinkwheel, you say you cut your filter. What, literally lengthways? Just the material? Is this so it just fills the void?
Have others done this?

John

[stinkwheel]

I cut the old one open when I change it so I can see if there are any bits floating bout in the engine I should know about. It's pretty impressive what it does catch, even down to little hairs and bits of muck that may have got in when I change/check the oil or had a cover off.

[PeteF]

I agree with Stinkwheel, there's no real advantage to fitting a modern filter.
The existing filter, though not the best in the world is a lot better than none.
RE were very advanced back in the day by having a filter at all as most marques had just a bit of gauze and perhaps a sludge trap. We used to manage without air filters too!
REs certainly don't need any extra oil or cooling as witnessed by the emulsion problems that most of us have to deal with.
However, if you want to fit one you could easily plumb it in on the rocker feed line as the Indian iron barrel models circulate all the oil up to the rockers.

[Bullet Whisperer]

We have a spin on filter on our 500 racer, but this was only done so we could cut off the oil filter chamber from the timing cover so we could place the engine lower in the Featherbed frame. Our 350 racer can hit 9,500 rpm and uses the standard factory filter with no issues.

[Daiwiskers]

You seem to be worried about the lubrication system as a whole (sorry that word doesn't look right no matter how I spell it)

Don't worry about it just give it good fresh oil it will be fine but buy your filters from our hosts (I made the mistake of buying some from India never again the felt was falling apart)

Your time and money will be better spent on sorting the known weaknesses
Spigot height
Breather problems

Only worry about things when they play up the spigot and the breather want sorting both have been covered on the forum and are easy enough to do

Hope this helps Dai

[Bullet Whisperer]

Here is the spin on filter arrangement on the 500 racer.