Oil filter to headers clearance advice
 

I'm looking for advice or suggestions with clearance between headers and oil filter. 350 SB with Sanderson headers, there is about 3/8" clearance between the outer edge of collector flange and the filter. Photos should give you an idea.
Is there enough clearance there to avoid issues with cooking oil in the filter? I actually bought a remote filter mount kit but would prefer not going that way if I can avoid it. There was an offset filter adapter that brought the filter in closer to the pan which seems to be discontinued.
Feedback appreciated!

Thx!
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Re: Oil filter to headers clearance advice
 

I will say you will be OK. You have lots of room to move air through the area, the oil in the filter will be circulating. You will likely cause the filter housing to get warmer but the circulating oil will dissipate it and your cooling system will take it away. In addition there are literally millions of vehicles running around with the same or smaller clearances and the interweb is not burning down with reports of burnt oil in filters.
If you want more peace of mind you can check it with a non contact heat gun. Compare the closest point and the furthest point on the filter.
Most conventional oils start breaking down around 240* and synthetic oils are much higher with some in the 500* area. Your brand oil oil should be able to provide more specific numbers.
I hope this helps.

Re: Oil filter to headers clearance advice
 

Thanks for the detailed advice and I agree with your points, just looking to confirm what I was thinking. I have a good IR temp gun so will go through the temperature drops, should see a drop from the wall of the collector pipe to the outside of that flange and another big drop from the edge of the flange to the wall of the filter. Sitting at idle would be worst case and rolling on the road would be much larger temp drops.

Re: Oil filter to headers clearance advice
 

This interests me too as I'm looking at the same thing right now. I'm worried about the starter, transmission electric wires, rubber parts on the by-wire-tranny linkage, **oil filter** and some other stuff.

Thanks!

-klb

Re: Oil filter to headers clearance advice
 

There are a lot of products that you can buy to help keep the heat from reaching the wiring. I usually use cheap plastic wire loom for abrasion resistance.

For stuff near exhaust or other heat sources I'll put something like this on: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/the-14025. For the temp sender in the side of the head, I had something like this on the wire with it touching the header for a few years. No issues and the wire doesn't appear to have been harmed.

You can buy starter heat shields/wraps if you are worried about the starter getting too hot: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-350118-1.

I think heat shields always work better than wrapping something though. The airflow around stuff cools it a lot and remember that insulation works both ways. If you wrap a starter, it's going to hold heat in which might be worse than the side of the starter case getting hot from the exhaust.


I don't see any issues with running the oil filter in that configuration. If you want to see something scary, look at what Subaru used for a while: photobucket

Re: Oil filter to headers clearance advice
 

That looks fine. I bought a filter for big trucks once to put on my C20 (I think it holds 1-1/2 or 2 quarts) but it ended up almost touching the exhaust manifold and exhaust pipe, so I didn't use it.

Re: Oil filter to headers clearance advice
 

Looks like you could spin the flanges to the area between bolts to gain another 1/4"... almost double the distance. Running down the road there as air cooling going on, so no worries there. I run full length headers, so never had the situation you have. Lots of people running 3/4 length Sandersons and I've never heard of any issue with heating crankcase oil temps. If I was adding any lines that carry crankcase oil with possible leak potential It would be for an oil cooler before a remote filter. I'd think that would over compensate for any heating from the headers and still offer cooler oil temps overall.

As far as wrapping holding heat in goes, the filter isn't intended to dissipate temps and the oil passing through will be the same temp throughout the engine. A wrapped filter (if you even had the room) would hold in no more heat than the block itself. On starters, with normal start-up they don't make any heat worth considering, while the exhaust is a constant source of high temps that the wrap insulates against. Not a bad thing.