Did anyone here catch that experiment, a few months back, where Total Seal Piston Rings intentionally tried to kill an engine with iron powder, just to see if oil filter quality really matters or not? Those wacky guys, I tell ya…

For those of you who may have missed this straightforward, yet super sadistic experiment, be sure to check out the link in the intro paragraph above before reading the rest of this article. Trust us. You’re going to want to know the backstory behind this contamination crucible. We’ll wait…

Now that you’re all caught up, it is time to assess the follow-up analysis that the Total Seal team did a few weeks back. Yes, those same zany brains that dropped five hefty grams of magnificently made Maganflux iron powder into five quarts of premium motor oil are back, and this time around they are examining the carnage that this contaminated oil created.

In the video, “Dyno Don” MacAskill and Lake Speed, Jr. spared us the deconstructive time-lapse and skipped right to the meat of the matter. Total Seal’s skunkworks scientists are forever researching and testing new piston ring coatings to see what its next generation of top-tier products will contain.

So in actuality, this experiment had just as much to do with beta testing as it did with anything else. In this case, that translates to a PVD Titanium Nitride (TiN) coated set of rings and one extreme scenario.

Monitoring The Burning Ring of Fire

As we stated previously, Total Seal Piston Rings subjected two very different engine oil filters to this same contaminated torture test. One of these was a wire mesh unit. The other was a paper filter. Each consumable product received an even hour of run time with the iron powder-infused oil inside. To make things a bit more magical, random “power runs” were implemented throughout this time span, and amazingly, the engine did not implode, explode, or crap the bed in any form or fashion.

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As for the filters tested, the metal mesh filter flowed far better than the paper unit (go figure), but it also allowed a metric mess of contaminants into sensitive sections of the block and up into the head. So naturally, both power and efficiency dropped astronomically. While the paper filter did a much more decent job than its metallic opponent, even then those pesky iron particles still managed to float on through.

The result? An engine that lost 10 horsepower over the span of just one hour. Yikes. Here’s what caused that power loss.

I Don’t Need Any More Iron in My Diet

While damage to the top piston ring was visible with the naked eye (and maybe a monocle), the second ring told an even more disparaging story. As its website states, the secondary unit in this sort of Total Seal piston ring set is a ductile iron ring, which in this case, is a Napier-style ring.

It was on this secondary ring that the signature Napier “hook” was completely worn off by the iron powder. All done within the span of just one hour, leaving little more than a “step” behind. As MacAskill explains in such eloquent terms, this iron powder acts as a fine form of exfoliant, or sandpaper. Wearing down whatever it touches with a winning double-hook of friction and heat.

Naturally, this form of heavy contamination experimentation borders on the extreme. All for the sake of science, product testing, and nerdy curiosity. This leads us back to today’s most super-sensitive topic: Engine bearings. Lake Jr. says that while the testing of both uncoated bearings and coated bearings was completed without issue in the first experiment, internal inspections provided a grimace-inducing sight.

Listen to the Don When He’s Speaking

As expected, both the coated and raw bearings took a beating from the iron powder swirling around inside, but the coated bearings came out far less marred than the non-coated materials, and “Dyno Don” has a theory as to why this was the case.

Don surmised that because this Titanium Nitride PVD cocktail being tested was a bit on the milder/softer side, any iron particles that skipped past the oil filter’s media ended up sticking to it instead of being passed on to other areas like the crankshaft and the rest of the engine’s lower rotating assembly.

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Granted, the crankshaft definitely still got its “grind on,” but go figure. There were five freakin’ grams of iron powder playing around inside that sucker. Have you ever tried to put five G’s of that stuff in your protein shake and then go for a jog? Talk about a rough way to start the day…

Now as for the engine’s cylinder walls and pistons, McAskill was fairly impressed with how everything looked at first glance. And then he popped on his proctologist gloves and broke out the profilometer.

Holy hell was there some wear to be seen inside this sucker! Sure, the internal bore was still structurally intact and salvageable, and the valleys all looked usable, but that surface finish was pretty much shined down to nothing.

Now as for the very bottom end of the block, where ring travel can be measured in full, that portion of the motor told a far more gruesome tale. Vertical surface streaking from the iron powder grinding into the cylinder walls from the piston ring’s compression and continued cycle proved that the substance was far more aggressive than previously thought.

And then there was the oil pump, which had to be fully rebuilt and thoroughly cleaned, along with the rest of the engine. While some scoring could be seen within the oil pump itself, it was the oil pump’s bypass that really saw the most abuse, and toward the end of testing was bordering on being labeled as “stuck.”

All five grams of that iron dust hit the oil pump with the force of a stampeding sumo stable before moving on to the rest of the engine. And yes, you read that correctly. It is actually called a “sumo stable.” And yes, sumo wrestlers actually live and train there. Look it up…

The Iron Man Will Return…

The solid camshaft and lifters also saw some wear from the poison pumping inside, causing “Dyno Don” to deem them completely unusable and therefore destined for the dumpster. I suppose that big red glob of iron dust found at the bottom of the solvent tank when the boys were cleaning up the engine really did leave its mark after all. No worries. There’s some good news to go with all the bad.

Remember all those many minutes ago when I said that Total Seal’s coating on the top ring in the set being tested contained chromium? And the fact that the oil rail coating contained titanium?

Well, a little bit of post-run oil analysis showed neither of these materials floating around inside. So while the iron powder did mar the hell out of the engine’s internals, these softer coatings appeared to have remained affixed to the piston rings. Furthermore, this coating combo made for a better ring seal, thus creating more power, greater efficiency, and cool points for when somebody asks you what rings you’re running.