I've been a professional mechanic for 20 years now. I've seen engines fail to oil starvation from the oil pickup screen being clogged with sludge, usually from neglect of oil changes or just really crappy oil quality. The sludge is a semisolid that you can easily smash with your fingers.

I've been tossing around this idea of just pulling the pickup screen out of the pickup tube to reduce the ability for that to happen on an engine. My thoughts are if it can make it to the oil pump , the pump will smash it up and push it into the filter to where if it is still any kind of a problem it will just be in the filter. Also if any hard particulates are in the oil pan, they are most likely from your own engine internals and it is time to pull the engine apart anyway.

So the tradeoff would be. Keep the protection of possible hard parts being pulled into the oil pump but have a higher risk of oil starvation from semisolid blockage on the pickup screen.

This theory is for engines in general. I just wanted to know you guys thoughts on the matter.

In my experience I see seized engines just as often as I see engines with broken rods or broken timing chains. I have even seen broken camshafts from loss of oil and one broken crankshaft that still ran.

 

The pickup is designed to AID flow to the oil pump and prevent cavitation (sucking air) as well as preventing trash from getting into the oil pump.
Leave the pickup in place and change your oil (or tell your customers).

 

The pickup screen doesn't prevent cavitation. The housing around it does.

 

Cavitation happens when oil is low and air is drawn in alongside oil. With correct oil level the pickup tube opening always submerged with no chance of drawing in air unless the car is upside down.

 

Removing the screen is a terrible idea. It can then allow particles of solid material large enough to seize the pump gears. Seizing the pump gears will cause parts breakage and near immediate engine seizure. Run good oil and change it. Problem solved, anybody too dumb to do that will need an engine anyway.

 

Very true. The reason I was thinking of this theory is because of my truck. I have an 01 gmc that I've had for 6 years, it has 247000 on it but I've only put about 14000 on it. I change the oil without fail every 3000 miles. But the other day I was coming home in it and I lost oil pressure while at 1800rpm and 60mph on the highway. After I looked into it when I got it home, the upper engine is very sludged up and me doing regular oil changes is slowly breaking that free and it is dropping into the pan. So it clogged up the pickup screen. My though was if that wasn't there then I would have been able to drive it home with no problems. But the other side of it would be I would never have known to look for a problem inside the engine also. I'm going to pull the engine and clean and regasket the whole thing but it was just a thought of how many of those engines I've seen locked up could have survived a little while longer if the pickup screen wouldn't have starved the engine of oil.