If you're on the fence or a skeptic about buying a dimple brand magnetic drain plug, the pictures below may change your mind. I bought my 2011 MCS new, ran the factory oil until the 800 mile mark, then installed a dimple magnetic drain plug and filled the crankcase with Mobil 1 synthetic. I am now at about 4500 miles and the pictures below show what's on the magnet. I was a bit doubtful on how much this would work, but clearly it does pull out some metal particulates. I should also note that I bought the crankcase drain plug from Outmotoring while also purchasing a magnetic tranny drain plug (no pics of the tranny plug yet - too recent)

You decide if this is for you to pursue or not as an upgrade... BTW, I have no connections with Dimple or any other magnetic drain plug manufacturer. I will also say that the Dimple brand plugs appear to be double the magnetic strength than the cheaper competitor. I have both, Dimple (drainplugmagnets.com) for the Mini and for my beater Suzuki Swift I have a goldplugmagnet.com plug (half as strong) from what I can tell.

Drain plug results from mile 800 to 4500




This is how clean the plug should actually look:



This is all the metal 'funk' that came off the drain plug:




Actual as of yesterday:

 

Even more so, this should convince people to change their oil sooner and more often than the OBC tells them too. 15,000 miles between oil changes?! Don't think so....

 

It's hard to tell from the pictures, is there actual metal stuck to the magnet?
Thanks for the comments, ironically I was looking at one of those at OutMotoring about an hour ago. I wouldn't think it could hurt to have one of those.

 

Thanks for the comments thus far. Although it's not my intent to start some debate around frequency of oil changes, I do feel the OEM recomendations are a bit optimistic. Particularly in a turbo engine where oil could be subject to 'coking' over time with higher temps.

As for the pictures, yes there is some sort of metal based film on the drain plug. The black you see on the end of the plug is not oil - it's metal. The magnet is so strong that I really had to work at it to get all gunk and funk off there.

I should also mention that I don't think Cooper Mini engines are in some special class that require drain plug magnets. After seeing this, I have purchased magnetic drain plug magents for all my vehicles.

 

tvanhouten,

Thanks for the picture and experiment. I couldn't tell where the metal particles were either.

It would be great if you can continue to take pictures like this in future oil changes as well.

 

That's pretty impressive! It would be interesting to know how much of the iron based particles would have been trapped in the filter in the absence of the magnet. Of course, the filter still has a job to do with copper, lead, aluminum and other foreign materials.

This is not an attempt to discount the value of a magnet.

 

I have been using the Magnastrap for a couple of years on the MINI and it catches a lot of metal particles. You can see the particles after removing the filter for an oil change. It is a rubber strap with 4 magnets in pockets that wraps around the oil filter housing. I had used on before on another car and it works fine on the MINI. I am a fan of the oil filter magnets that stick to the metal can filters, but they do not work on our plastic can with the replaceable insert. Here is a link: http://moremiles4u.com/BUY-Magnastrap.php

 

Yuk. But without the magnet, wouldn't those metal sludges drain out with the dirty oil?

 

They probably would but between oil changes they're floating around possibly building up and causing premature engine wear...

 

And that's really the point of having the plug magnet: to keep as many small bits of ferrous metal as you can from recirculating through the engine via the oil.

But to temper this discussion a bit: it's not unusual for a brand new engine to produce some metal bits for the first few thousand miles. Things are still getting broken (i.e., worn) in, so there's bound to be a tiny bit of metal-on-metal wear within the engine. If you adhere to the ~5k oil change regimen, and everything settles in 'normally,' I would expect the amount of metal on your plug magnet to diminish to almost nothing in the not-too-distant future.

Still, having the plug magnet is cheap insurance: it may allow one to catch abnormal engine wear problems in the early stages, should any develop.