Re: Oil filter optional ??

Posted by Fish'n Jim On 2021/4/22 19:57:12

And if you had one, it was only a "partial" filter. A side stream of the oil was sent to the filter, not all of it. Pretty common back then. My decade later '58 Cad is similarly equipped(partial filter). Full filtration didn't come til '61 model.
Oil was fairly inexpensive, ~20 cents/qt post war and was cheaper to just change it frequently than invest in filtration.
Many people just topped it off at the pump and never bothered with changing.
I believe the shop manual calls for periodic scraping out the oil pan. Sump was pretty much a place to settle out the solids from combustion. They used to sell remote oil plugs, so you could warm up the motor and pull the "plug" and drain it while it was hot, often in some inconspicuous location, so you didn't have to dispose of the old oil.
Don't know how many of these leaked or were accidently bumped open during driving...