Hi guys I went to drift day and saw one of these aftermarket oil plugs at the www.cartune.com booth. They had these huge magnets on the bolts but they didn't have any for mazda's. I found a site that has them and emailed him for the size. Here's his response....so for the rest that want to clean the metal particles out of the oil...here you go.



Hello,

Mazda has used a 14mm oil drain plug for almost all of their cars and light trucks since 1971.
I do not have a listing for the 2004 RX8 1.3L but I would think it is a 14mm-1.5.

The OE replacement plug is our number 1015
http://www.cgenterprises.com/drain_plugs_metric.htm
Our magnetic plug is number 1015M
http://www.magneticdrainplugs.com/metric.htm

Regards,
Hello,

Mazda has used a 14mm oil drain plug for almost all of their cars and light trucks since 1971.
I do not have a listing for the 2004 RX8 1.3L but I would think it is a 14mm-1.5.

The OE replacement plug is our number 1015
http://www.cgenterprises.com/drain_plugs_metric.htm
Our magnetic plug is number 1015M
http://www.magneticdrainplugs.com/metric.htm

Regards,

 

are these things worth it or just snake oil? If I remember from my days in science class can't you put your oil plug on a magnet for a night and it become magnetized?

 

Maybe I'm wrong but I think there is a strong magnet in the olil filter itself. Couldn't hurt though...

 

You can also just get a small rare earth magnet from a hobby store... drill a hole in the stock plug end, and epoxy the magnet in.... let sit overnight....

Put back in, fill oil up.

 

I know several Miata guys have used them, and reported seeing some very light sediment stuck on them when they did oil changes. I would imagine that something like that might be useful when breaking in a new engine, but on the other hand, if particles are too heavy to make it out of the bottom of the pan up to the oil filter, they might not be worth worrying about.

Either way, in my book it's one of those things that can't hurt... especially something inexpensive like this.

YMMV...

-Sean

 

My Alfa Romeo has a magnetic drain plug on it. Came with the car, but I have no idea if it was original or anything. Every change it has some small amount of material on it.

The thing here is that when I pulled the pan to replace the oil pump, the pan had about a pound and a half (this is probably a huge exaggeration, but it's how it seems in my memory) of babbit material and various metals caked into the recesses of the pan.

In my opinion, magnetic drain plugs are pretty much snake oil.

 

I gotta agree, plus isn't there a wiremesh strainer the oil has to pass through before it can even make it to the oil pump? Between that and the filter I think bases are covered as far as crankcase oil goes.

Transmission drain plugs often have magnets, which makes more sense because there's no filter.

 

You are better off with a filter magnet. www.filtermag.com is where I got my Sienna mag. I used these on my Alfa and have seen filters cut open with particles stuck to the side in the shape of the magnet. I agree plug filters are useless.

 

I dunno. I think that anything that removes contaminants from the engine oil is good, even if it's secondary.

I had magnetic plugs in a Fiat & maybe my MGB. Oh yeah, my dry sump & engine plugs in my '70 911E. I missed not seeing magnets in my other newer car's plugs, like wearing shoes with no socks.

It just takes a quick wipe to remove the sludge when you have it out. It's kind of like metalic paint - looking. I have seen metal flecks on them once in a while, about the size of a piece of dandruff. Can be felt easily between your fingers. Gives you a good sign of an advanced wear condition going on in there. I always checked them carefully before & during the wipe-off, like examining the blood (& "stuff") of a patient.

Yeah, it's before the filter, but then again, it's before the pump. And yeah, one pass and it's filtered out, but,,,

So, that's my take on this topic.

You got a price on them? $6.95 ?

 

Yeah 6.95 shipped. I also checked out that filtermag and thought that was a good idea. I don't know what size to get though so I thought I'd try making my own first since its just magnets. I'm going to try the arc magnets from
http://www.rare-earth-magnets.com/
and if those suck maybe try again with the block magnets to look like the filtermag. If it sucks I can always throw them on the fridge!

 

I had a magnetic oil drain plug in my vintage 1961 Mini and at every oil change there was a lot of metal shavings stuck to it. So I alway thought this was a good thing.

As someone else said, it can't hurt anything.

 

Except your wallet . With auto manufacturers offering higher mileage warranties, I would think they would use magnetic drain plugs if they worked.

regards,
rx8cited

 

It only costs $2.00.

All the metal shavings in my Mini would have been circulating throughout the engine(some captured by the filter) if it wasn't for the magnetic drain plug.

 

Careful tossing some of these magnets on your fridge. If it's one of the flat ones you may never get it off without destroying the paint!

If you have any junk computer hard-drives laying around they can be disassembled to obtain a couple of surpisingly powerful magnets.

Some more fun magnet sites

http://www.wondermagnet.com/main.shtml

http://www.dansdata.com/magnets.htm

 

In most cars, all of the oil must pass through the filter on its way to lubricate the engine. A magnetic drain plug will gather some metal because it has a chance to remove it before the filter does. On the other hand, I guess it could provide some measure of defense if the filter bypass gets stuck open.

 

The 1015M magnetic plug is the right one for the RX-7, and has been for twenty years, but the '8 is a 19mm plug.

The thread's the same, and it WILL fit, but the stock head is 19mm, not 14.
.
.
.
doc

 

Doc, "The stock head..."? Are you talking about the size of the hex. of the head? The size of the socket/wrench?

I don't see any 19mm threaded plugs on the site (see the first post for the link - the magnetic one, of course).

Would you like to suggest another part number?

 

So what are you trying to say??? this is not the right one and it is at the sametime? Did you see a better choice because mine is already on the way and I want to complain if its the wrong one. Am I suppose to complain because I have to use a different size socket to remove my stock and install the magnetic plug? I don't understand what my complaint should be.

 

You can get these cheaper at PepBoys, Kragen, AutoZone, etc....

 

just wondering... so anyone got the filtermag for their 8s?

is it bad for the electronics and stuff like the ECU in your car by having such a powerful magnet under the hood??

 

Here you go, I bought this one and installed it Sat morning. It looked good and was heavy duty, perfect fit.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...spagename=WDVW

If you even think you have "heavy" metal particles in the filter you should do something about it... The statement that the metal can not get lifted up, would not make me very comfortable.....big particles break down into smaller particles over time.