Maintenance, Mods, Reviews, Videos

Review: does a magnetic oil drain plug work?

Hand holding a used greddy oil drain plug

In an earlier post I explained why I changed my OEM oil drain plug for an aftermarket Greddy one. The new plug has an extremely strong magnet (checkout the video) to catch small metal particles floating around the engine or engine oil, it says. But does a magnetic oil drain plug work?

The marketing for a part like this is easy. Because sounds very logic that a magnet will catch at least apart of metal particles from your oil. So that message makes sense. But does it actually work? I’ve driven around 3500 km’s in about 1.5 years before checking the status of the drain plug. The video below shows it best.

As you can see there are not a lot of metal bits and pieces caught, but it’s not clean either. I drive my car very little as I’m lucky enough to have another daily drive. But I can see how much is “filtered” out if you drive more than I do.

The verdict

So does a magnetic oil drain plug work? Yes it does! If you don’t have a magnetic drain plug it’s worth it to get one. As seen in the video above, it does what it says it will do; filter out some of the parts that otherwise would float around your engine oil.

Installing a magnetic sump plug will not cost you the world. It is a cheap modification that you can install at every oil change interval. Since the drain plug will come of every oil change anyway. If you ask your mechanic to replace it at the next maintenance interval he will probably do it without any extra charge.

Other reasons to buy one of these is if you’re car is getting older (mine just turned 11) or when putting your engine under more stress than normal. By tuning and/or hard driving at the track for example. Cheap, easy to install, improving engine oil quality and won’t  hurt your car. Easy decision right?

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