oil filter paint bubbles

[jbagley]

Anyone seen anything like this before?

I've seen some slightly high oil tempuatures (220 - 230) on a recent flight, but also found my oil tempurature guage is reading high by 20-30 degrees, so really not very hot. I'm in the process of re-calibrating the oil temp and checking the usual suspects; oil cooler, baffling, vernatherm. Any other ideas as to what might cause the paint on the oil filter to blister like that?

 

[tim2542]

Yep!

Brake clean does this! Did you spray some on it to clean the oil off?
I sure hope your oil temp didn't do that.
Tim

2013 dues paid

 

[airguy]

That sure looks like solvent exposure to me.

 

[turbo]

scrape some of that paint off of there and see what it looks like.

 

[airguy]

If it was strictly due to oil temps, you would see the affected region over the whole filter, not just the base. I'm betting you had some kind of solvent exposure to the affected paint - might have been before you put it on the airplane or even before you purchased the filter.

 

[Lycosaurus]

Tempest paint problem?

I use Tempest oil filters as well. My last couple of filters had some of the paint flaking off near the base of the filter.

I suspect that Tempest may have had a paint formulation/application problem at some point.

 

[Mike F]

A friend of mine had the same problem. He contacted Tempest and they responded with this...

"... the problem was in our heat curing process for the powder coating paint process. If you are not familiar with powder coating, it is a very detailed painting process and is a very durable process for products such as oil filters. Because of it's durability, it requires a heat curing process and we discovered some time back the curing process was compromised. Since our filters are visually inspected as well as burst checked, etc., these should have been caught through our visual inspection, however, were not.

Again we apologize for the inconvenience, but I assure you, we have taken the necessary corrective action to assure it does not happen again..."

I might add they sent him a free 6-pack of filters as compensation.

 

[jbagley]

Thanks all!

I called Tempest and they confirmed that this oil filter is one from a batch that didn't get the paint fully cured (or some such). I have one other unboxed oil filter from the same order as this one (Chief Aircraft). Tempest wants both back and will replace them with new. He thought they had seen the last of these.

Only downside is doing an oil change ~10 hours early. Cheap insurance for peace of mind though.