How to Install an AMSOIL Bypass Filter System

We’re here today to install a single remote bypass filtration system on this Ford* F350 2012 with a 6.7-liter power stroke. AMSOIL’s BMK33 system is a single remote where it draws oil where the full flow oil filter is and then it returns it back through the filler neck. So the first thing we’re going to do with this truck, we’re just going to drain the oil out of the engine. While we’re waiting for the oil to drain out of that truck, let’s go through some of the components here and explain what they do.

First we have our head. This will mount to a secure location of the truck and then the bypass filter will attach to this. You’ll have lines that run to this and out of this. In order to feed that head with oil, we need to pull pressurized oil from the engine.

This device here allows us to do that and what this does is it goes in between the block and the full flow filter. So when you spin the full flow filter on, this gets installed and then the full flow filter gets installed onto this. So this will pull pressurized oil from the engine and feed our bypass filter. In order to get that oil that’s now highly filtered back to the engine, we need a means to do so.

The oil fill cap on your truck will be removed and you can store that for future use. You’ll replace it with this one. Now the filtered oil will attach to the center and drip down into the oil filler neck of the truck. We have some hoes here that we’ll cut to custom lengths depending on where we mount the head.

We have some fittings and some hardware that we’ll use to install all of this. What we do have is a decal. You can take this and stick it to a location on your truck. You can center punch the holes, drill the holes, it makes it easier to install that head.

Let’s take our head and our bypass filter and let’s go find a good location on this truck to mount that. When we’re looking for a proper location to install this bypass filter on this F-350, we want to make sure that we keep the filter out of harm’s way. And by that I mean we don’t want to put it in a place where it’s going to take road debris from a vehicle that’s in front of it. So we want to make sure that it’s protected.

So when we start looking underneath the truck for location, we want to take into consideration road debris from in front of the truck and we also want to take into consideration road debris that might be tossed off the tires from the truck. So let’s go underneath the truck and see what we can find. Alright, we’re climbed underneath the front of the truck here and we’re looking for a suitable location to install this. So we want to make sure again as we keep it out of harm’s way.

In doing so, these turbo diesel pickups are getting really hard to find space to mount stuff. So we want to make sure that you don’t mount it in areas of suspension travel, anything that might move. We don’t want to directly mount it to the engine because it vibrates a lot. So on this truck, there’s a crossmember right here that is supporting the radiator.

Might not be a bad location for it. Might not be a bad location up here on the inside frame rail. Got to kind of take into consideration the sway bar and its movement and then the lines how they might intersect the head for this. It’s not really a good place to mount it up in the front bumper.

So from the front of the truck’s perspective, this is probably the best spot right on this crossmember. Another place that people have installed bypass systems is along the frame rails. The one thing you want to take into consideration here is that a lot of rocks and debris come off the front tires. So what you don’t want to do is you don’t want to take a rock in the filter.

It could puncture the filter and leak oil striding you on the side of the road. So I wouldn’t necessarily recommend installing this on the outside frame rail. And on these trucks, to try to go on the inside frame rail, you have a big exhaust system on the passenger side. So that’s going to deem this side useless for installing this.

And on the other side, you have a fuel filter and a lot of brake lines and fuel lines that run to it. So it doesn’t really look like there’s much opportunity to go on the inside frame rails on this truck at all. So my best recommendation at this point is to go back up front. Take a look at those two locations that we initially looked at.

Pick which one’s the best. All right, we’re back up front of the two locations that we picked out up here. The one that’s going to best suit our needs for serviceability and protection of the filter itself is right on this crossmember. Right about right here.

So we’ll fix our adhesive decal there. We’ll drill some holes through there, and then we’ll mount this head. Now that we have our location picked up, let’s take the adhesive sticker, mount it on that crossmember, and you can center-punch your holes and drill them. Center punches are done.

Let’s take and drill a few holes through this sticker. Once we’re done drilling the holes, we can pull this sticker off. On this particular installation, because of where we chose to mount the head, we’re not going to be able to use the typical bolt and nut hardware that came with the kit. This is very typical in bypass system installs.

You may have to have some other hardware in order to install the head, depending on where you mount it. For this one, we’re going to use self-tapping bolts that go right up into that frame member. Because we’re using self-tapping bolts on this, I took the Liberty off-camera to run the bolts in, thread the holes, and then back them out so we can easily run them in with your average box-in wrench here. We don’t want to tighten it too much at this point so we can get all the bolts in.

When we use these self-tapping bolts, since we don’t have a nut in the backside, what we chose to do is use some red Loctite. So when you thread them in, red Loctite will permanently bond in there. We want all these bolts to back out. Now that we got the head mounted on the truck, let’s install our bypass filter.

Typically, we recommend you filling the filter with oil, but considering that we have it on its side right now, if you fill it up, turn it on its side, it’s going to pour out naturally. So just take a little oil, lubricate the gasket, spin it on, and tighten it per the instructions that we have on the label. Now that the gasket has touched the head, as it says on the label, one revolution past the filter touching the head. What I like to do is I like to take a paint pan, I mark the back of the filter, and then I align it with something on the truck to get orientation, so I make sure that I get one full revolution.

That same paint pan comes in handy, you can write the date and the mileage of the truck so you know when you install it. So because the full-full filter on this truck is on the passenger side, that’s where the pressurized oil is going to come from. Both in and out on this head are directing towards the passenger side. We’re also going to want to run a line up to the top of the engine to feed the unpressurized side back to the engine.

For that, we’re going to choose to use the two straight fittings, so the holes will intersect that head going into it straight on both the pressurized and non-pressurized side for this one. So we take our thread sealant, we’ll put a little bit of thread sealant on our threads. Now these are tapered thread fittings, so we want to make sure that we get two to three times past finger tight in revolutions. If you want to use the same paint pen trick, I’d recommend doing that now.

All right, now we’re going to install the fitting into the thread adapter here. So this is the puck that goes in between the full-full filter and the block, pulls pressurized oil out of this port. We’re going to use this 90-degree fitting, and on the truck, we’ll install it so it lands about like that so that we can route the hose up and over the engine into the inlet port of the bypass head. So, same thing again.

You’re going to take your thread sealant, put some on your threads, make sure it gets all the way around, and we’re going to screw this in. And again, it’s two to three revolutions past finger tight. All right, now we have our fitting installed into the puck. Make sure that you lubricate the o-ring gasket that’ll seal up against the engine.

And then here’s the thread adapter piece that will end up threading onto the existing stud of the engine and then we’ll torque down. Make sure that you get the right orientation of your fitting off to the side so that when you intersect it with your line, it’s in the right location. Now that we have that finger tight, we’re going to set our torque wrench to 50 foot-pounds and we’re going to go and tighten that down. Right here, what we’re doing is we’re just filling the full flow filter up with oil before we screw it on to the adapter that we just installed on the engine.

Lubricate the gasket up and we’ll spin it on the truck. Once again, rotate the filter on until it touches the adapter you screwed on. Then on this boat, there’s three-quarters of a turn from finger tight. So again, we’ll take our paint marker, make a reference on here, and then it’s three-quarters of a turn from there.

Alright, now we’re at the point where we need to connect the hoses from the adapter you just installed on the engine to the bypass head and then from the bypass head up to the filler neck. The next step we’re going to take is we’re going to install a fitting on the end of this hose so we can start getting the appropriate line lengths. This is your fitting. What we’re going to do is we want to take and separate these two components.

So now we have two parts, we’ll set this one aside. Take your hose, make sure that you’ve got a good square cut on the end of it. And this part of the fitting will thread onto the hose. Now it’s reverse threads.

So normally it’s righty-tighty, this one’s going to be lefty-tighty. And we’re just going to walk that fitting onto the hose. Now you might need a little wrench to give yourself a little bit of leverage, but the threads of that fitting will bite into the hose and spin itself on. Now what you do is once you get towards the end you’ll notice that the fitting will bottom out on the end of the hose.

Just back it off just a little bit so that the end of the hose is just a little bit from seeding itself onto that fitting. Alright, now we have that secure. The next step we’re going to do is we need to install this portion of the fitting. The easiest thing to do is if you have a vise you can take this and lock this component down in your vise.

And then this fitting gets threaded into this component. So the easy thing to do is to put a little bit of lubricant on the edge of that fitting. Stick that into the hose, and then you start threading this in. Now these are standard threads now, so tightening is the normal direction.

Take your 9-16 wrench and just tighten this component of the fitting. You want to tighten that until it’s just snug. You don’t have to put a lot of torque on it. Just tighten it until it’s snug.

That fitting is done. So we have our hose. We want to make sure that we run the line so they can’t chafe on anything. So anything that vibrates or moves we want to make sure that we stay away from.

And then along the way there’s some zip times provided in your kit that you can secure the hose so that it doesn’t move. So we’re going to get to routing this line. Alright, we have the pressurized line run from the adapter all the way to the bypass head now. And we secured it along the way to things that are not going to chafe the line or move.

So now we’re ready to hook up to the inlet side of the bypass head. Now, that’s finger tight. Our directions say two flats beyond finger tight. So that’s one flat, that’s two flats on the hex.

So make sure that you hold the fitting that goes in the head so you don’t turn that. And you tighten this in two flats. You don’t want to over tighten it because you can actually do damage to the fitting. Alright, now we’re back under the truck.

We need to attach our pressurized line that goes from our adapter to our bypass head. So as we talked about earlier, it’s routed, secured, so it won’t chafe on anything. Now we just need to connect the fitting up. Same process as before.

Tighten it finger tight and then it’s two flats. Now that we have the pressurized line hooked up to the bypass head, we’re going to lower the truck. We’re going to go up top and we’re going to remove the factory filler cap. We’ll install our filler cap and then we’ll route the line that goes from the filler cap here down to the bypass head.

So let’s drop the truck. We got the hood open. We removed the factory fill cap. Now let’s install our aftermarket one in which you’re going to return all the bypass oil into.

So we have the fill cap installed. We started to pre-route our hose through the top of the engine compartment here. We’ll hook this fitting up just for temporary right now until we’re done routing the hose. We want to make sure that we route this hose through here that it doesn’t run on anything hot.

It’s not going to vibrate or chafe on anything. So we picked a couple good places to zip tie off of. Now the hose runs down to the passenger side by the fan shroud. We’re going to put the truck back up in the air so we can trim the hose off and connect it to the outlet of the bypass filter.

We’ve routed the return hose from the top of the engine that hooked up to our filler cap down by the fan shroud and now we’re ready to hook it into the outlet of our bypass filter. So, as again, we secured the hose so it wouldn’t rub or chafe on anything. Let’s go ahead and hook this thing up. Same process as before in tightening.

Finger tight. We’ll hold the fitting that goes into the bypass head and it doesn’t turn any. We’ll turn the fitting on the hose. Two flats.

Alright, we have the bypass system pretty much installed. What we want to do is fill the engine full of oil again. We use our AMSOIL 5W40 for this 6.7 liter power stroke. It’s going to take a little bit more volume than normal since we added the bypass filter and some hose.

So you’re going to want to put the normal volume in, start the truck, let it run a little bit, and then check the volume. We’re going to have to add a couple of cords to make sure that it’s in the safe zone. Alright, we put the recommended oil into the engine now. Now let’s go hit the key.

We’ll fill the filters up and then we’ll check for leaks underneath just to make sure our footings are right. We’ll shut it off and then we’ll do a final top off check to see whether we need to add any more oil. We started the truck, we checked for leaks. There weren’t any.

So what we want to make sure is that there’s an actual proper amount of oil in here. So, pull the dipstick out, clean it off, stick it back in, and we’ll see whether we have to add any additional oil to it. So again, when you add the bypass system it’s going to take a little bit more oil than what it’s called for in your owner’s manual. We’re just on the low side so we’re going to add a couple of cords to this truck.

Alright, we checked the oil again. She’s top off right to where the manufacturer recommends. So this truck is done. So this is an AMSOIL BMK33 single remote bypass filter installation on the 2012 6.7 power stroke diesel.