Subject: Frantz Oil Cleaner
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 1997
From: Rod Leggett <tac@hia.net>
The information on your web page is not quite accurate or up-to-date concerning the Frantz Oil Cleaner.
Back in the 60's the Frantz Oil Cleaner was sold through individual distributors. Kind of like Tupperware. The filter was very controversial. A lot people thought the toilet paper would come apart and clog up the engine. The fact was, the filter was ingenious. It was designed on the premise that oil never wears out -- it just gets contaminated. It wasn't designed to replace the engine's oil filter.
The unit was mounted usually in a place under the hood that was easily accessible. Usually on one of the tire wells or firewall. It had a chrome cover the size of a roll of toilet paper. You placed a roll of toilet paper inside the cover and slid the cover over a metal tube about the size of the toilet paper core. It attached to a base using a ring-type clamp. It had a rubber o-ring gasket at the base, and when you set the clamp, you got an oil-tight seal. It had two small pipe-fitting connections on the bottom. Using the connectors that came with the unit, you would attach a rubber hose to the opening marked "inlet" on the Frantz and the other end to a fitting on the engine that had oil pressure. It came with a fitting that would allow you to unscrew the oil pressure gauge fitting and install the Frantz fitting, which had two outlets. You could then reinstall the oil pressure fitting and a fitting that would allow you to connect the Frantz Oil Cleaner. The other opening on the Frantz was discharge outlet. You usually punched a hole in the oil pan and screwed in a fitting that came with the unit. You then connected a hose back to the outlet on the unit.
The Frantz didn't replace the oil filter that came on the car for two main reasons. First, you didn't want to void the car's warranty and second, you couldn't replace the filter, because a car's filter was designed not to restrict the oil pressure or flow to the engine parts. A cars oil filter doesn't clean oil, it just filters small microscopic metal parts from the oil.
Now this is where the Frantz Cleaner was ingenious. About 10% of the car's oil would flow through the Frantz. It went from the bottom and up through the tightly packed toilet paper into the center tube and back down in to the engine pan.
The toilet paper not only cleaned the oil, it removed water from it. You never had to change the oil, only the roll of toilet paper. One of the reasons I think it didn't catch on was that most of the cars at the time were using oils with additives. The additives would automatically under heat change the color of the oil from fresh clear-looking oil to black dirty-looking oil, even though it was as clean as the day you poured it out of the can. In conducting an experiment using oil without any additives, the oil never changed color. It remained as clear as the day it came out of the can.
The Frantz had a metal wire that was in the cleaner top that was placed there before you inserted the toilet paper so when it came time to change, you unfastened the clip at the bottom, removed the top, then you could use the metal wire to pull the paper out of the holder. Yes, if you weren't real careful and didn't know what you were doing it could be messy. If you did know what you were doing, it was great.
Just think about it. When it came time to change the oil & filter all you did was pop the hood, replace the toilet paper in the Frantz, add 1 quart of oil to the engine, and you were ready for another 3,000 or 5,000 miles. You never needed to change the car's regular oil filter because no sludge ever built up in the engine to clog it up. You didn't need to drain and change the car's engine oil because it remained clean and free from contaminants. Your cost for an oil and filter change? One quart of oil and one roll of toilet paper.
Frantz cleaners were not only used to clean a car's engine oil, they also were used to keep the radiator water clean and the transmission fluid clean. They also made one that held 3 rolls of toilet paper and was used for large diesel trucks or or any large gasoline- or diesel-driven equipment or machinery.
I'm not real sure why the company didn't survive. It may have been its distribution process or the failure of the public to accept it, but one thing is for sure, it worked.
Very truly yours,
Rod Leggett