After doing some research and thinking it over and reading your posts. I decided to change my opinion. Mag drain plugs may be beneficial. Worst case, (as long as you don't break the plug off in the pan) is that you waste a bit of your money.

Best case, the mag plug helps out the filter in removing junk that could be harmful to your engine.

 

Okay, one last try; there is no benefit a magnetic drain plug can provide as the oil filter's job is to remove any fragments large enough to do any damage to the engine. As I mentioned earlier, there are a whole host of wear metals which end up in engine oil; only a small percentage of said metals are ferrous; a magnet is utterly and completely useless at attracting brass, aluminum, lead, and any other non-ferrous metals.

 

Have some members ever worked for an engine builder? Have some of you taken apart at least a few dozen engines and can see the effects of small metal flakes NOT filtered by the oil filter which could have been capture by a pan magnet ? I have to both! Also Porsche ( one of a few auto manufactures) recognized this as a concern and installed a pan magnet from the factory as OEM EQUIPMENT in many of their model cars. I could post pictures of **cam caps , crank and rod bearing toasted(scored) by the failure on the part of the oil filter? You can contact a few Performance Engine Builders and ask them about damage to engine parts because the oil filter did not capture metal flakes better.
When I built engines for customers part of the sale was to give them a DRAIN PLUG MAGNET. The reason was personal experience as a profession Performance engine builder was not relying on the oil filter alone to filter harmful partials and additional support for the oil filtration was a drain plug or pan magnet which may help to reduce damage to vital internal engine parts?
My pictures posted of my very low mileage Mazda 2.5 Skyactiv engine shows that without question the Dimple Drain Plug magnet is capturing what was obviously missed not filtered by the many different oil filters I used from OEM Mazda to other top oil filters available. They all failed to completely capture everything going through my engine and the Dimple Drain plug did capture what the oil filter did not?

At this point some of you seem only to want to argue a point that you theorized but did not completely researched and tested for your self. If you look there are 85% or more personal or professional informational reads on the internet alone about the benefits using magnets on oil pans,transfer cases, and other engine and transmission parts.
Here is also something of interest... there is a publication listed from a Technical Reports Center at the US Patents and Trademarks Office/ US Department of Commerce from Technical Reports Center Updates technical information about drain plug magnets . LOL

*benefit
1a: something that produces good or helpful results or effects or that promotes well-being : ADVANTAGE
b: useful aid : HELPFUL

**I have offered over the years a line of Performance camshafts for a factory Supercharged 4 cylinder OHV engine that uses cam caps with no bearing. Having many customers concerned when they removed their OEM camshaft prior to installing the Performance camshaft were concerned about the visual damage on the cam caps. It was apparent that even with low mileage engine (under 50k miles) the oil filer was not filtering completely. So I always recommended the Dimple Oil Pan Drain plug be used to help increase the filtration of the oil metal contaminants that could be captured with theses pan magnets. I also recommended to reduce the mileage intervals between oil changes to no more than 5000 mils. For those customers that were more concerns I suggested have the oil analyzed once at their next oil change and then again at the recommend 5000 mile to see if their were improvements of changes in the analysis results.
These people after following the suggestion and recommendation reported positive results. Is this enough to support that magnet drain plug are of benefit, maybe not totally but never the less magnets will capture metal missed filtered by the engine oil filter, so if anything else these are a very inexpensive oil filtration back up insurance.

 

Also bare in mind that all filters are not equal. Cheap, no name filters do not filter as
well as better brand name units. Even then some brands have had problems with tears
in the filter media, leaky by-pass valves, etc....

Mag drain plugs are not very expensive and will last the life of the engine.

My ¢

 

I would venture anyone worried enough about the life of their engine to cause them to look into a magnetic drain plug is highly unlikely to use crappy oil filters.

 

WOW! off topic on this thread about what is and is not a quality oil filter....
Now there is a subject riddled full of BS. conjecture, very little depth in testing and many people relying on those BS posted from the UN-experienced or from any real people with any kind of true credential or properly set up and testing to report any real empirical Data and information on what to choose to use for their own engines. For years on that subject I have laughed my **** off !
I use so many oil filters and have sold THOUSANDS over the years from white generic named filters to fancy colorful labeled/painted oil filter and never once had one harm an engine. I grant you I have had the usual defects in manufacturing but nothing when you do the math on production levels of a single product part number that was alarming.

Back about the topic, magnetic drain plugs..... Its not about being worried about the life span of an engine more would argue it is taking care of an engine or transmission knowing that preventive steps and measures like using a magnetic drain plug some may feel (no real evidence of testing posting only a brain fart of a thought ) is a waste of time and money (cost less then a filling lunch at TACO BELL for 2 ) to help prevent costly repairs!

 

I repeat, all noise aside, a magnetic drain plug will not increase the life of an engine even a single mile; absolute waste of money.

 

Ok well you are absolutely wrong!


I have tried to give you information that would at least give you some thought or at best to simply stop the response of stubborn digging your heals in just because you said something you have little to no apparent experience with in almost all aspect of this conversation. It is almost you want to be heard and have the final word about it? LOL
Not to mention more members then not at least respond with they can't hurt and they are inexpensive for peace of mind. Your responses are not helpful to many reading this thread because you post nothing but a personally unsupported opinion. And frankly it pisses me off that you challenge my response no matter how accurate I try to be with supported data and real world experience? geeeez! LOL

Well in this case nothing you responded with IMHO gave anything worth while except your own personal thought on the topic. NOTHING? lol

Ok your turn fire away.. but try to at least give something you have done to support your response here let me help you to answer a few qualifying question.

1. Have you ever used a oil pan drain plug?
2. Have you ever tested oil sample which included any substance found on a magnetic drain plug?
3. Do you have any information from a reputable source that will show a drain plug magnet in the oil pan will do nothing to help protect an engine?
4. If you answered question number 1 then what exactly did you find that lead you to believe the magnetic drain plug was doing nothing?
5. If answered yes to number 2 do you have the copy of the analysis done that you can post and by what company even if it was only for oil alone?
6. Well I know you will not answer # 3 because had you the information you would have used it already to support your responses? lol



Now we all know why we as "ENGINEERS" are disliked so much on forums and even at time in the real work playing with others for exactly what is going on between two of us on this thread. Except one engineer has forgotten the basic pricible of testing a theory before presenting an answer!

 

LOL, I am an engineer and am very versed in how engine lubrication systems operate having worked the test stands where engines are run to distruction for three different manufacturers. Nobody is going to deny small bits of ferrous metal will be attracted by a magnetic drain plug, but so what? Those small bits will either:

1. Sit in the bottom of the oil pan until the oil is changed (either via draining or via a vacuum suction),
2. Sit in the bottom of the oil pan until the vehicle is junked,
3. Get pulled in by the oil pickup and filtered out by the oil filter,
4. Or, if they are so small they pass through the oil filter, they are too small to be harmful to the engine (the same holds true for non-ferrous metals).

What I don't understand is why this is such a difficult concept for folks to grasp.

 

I didn't think my questions were going to be answered?. HA!

I recommend that some learn how some oil filters work and also how the engine were set up at the testing falsities. I also have helped with fail analysis testing of factory engines as well transmission ( transmission were break tested on a Transmission Dyno) years ago .

So now we can talk about the Dynamic's of a fluid. Oil circulating the sump has enough volume to carry particulate material threw the oil lubrication system on an engine. Some oil filters have a by-pass regulated by temperature not only pressure which by-passes the oil around the oil filter. The collected metal from the sump magnet is generally after the engine is shut down and the last oil fills back into the sump when the heavy metal settles to the bottom of the pan. During the engine first start up the materiel will be picked up by the volume of oil flow and the magnet captures much of that settled sump material before it goes in to the pick up tube. This is also why when some dissect an oil filter they find less metal partials comparing a higher amount captured by a sump magnet.

To quote... "What I don't understand is why this is such a difficult concept for folks to grasp"