Introduction:
So in this product review I will be taking a look at the turner motorsports titanium magnetic drain plug, and why this is the only magnetic drain plug you should buy for your bmw. Before we begin I must thank ECS tuning/Turner motorsports for giving me a partial discount on the products that I will be using in this review, however I will be as unbiased as possible despite that.
Disclaimer:
Any technical advice, installation instruction, or product installation is done so at your own risk I will not be responsible for personal injuries, injuries to others or any living being, or any damage to your car, or any property damage.
Credits:
Images and videos used in this review are all property of their rightful owners as credited below each image, I am just using them for the purpose of this review but if you (the owner of the image) would like them removed please let me know via pm. Otherwise thanks to the owners (I made sure to credit your online name and link where I found the photo) of the photos, without you this review would be so much more bland.
Quick intro for those of you that don’t like long articles:
Cheap magnetic drain plugs made of brass or aluminium commonly break leaving the body of the bolt inside your drain pan resulting in alot of struggles to extract it. Cheap magnetic drain plugs can also have incorrect thread pitches and diameters that will result in damage to your oil pan threads. These cheap magnetic drain plugs can also utilize cheap neodymium magnets that loose their magnetic abilities at temperatures lower than what your engine oil gets to during operating conditions, this means that the magnetic drain plug will let go of all the metal debris it has stuck to until it cools down meaning it is essentially useless. The turner motorsports titanium magnetic drain plug address all of these issues and provides a magnetic drain plug that has no flaws that a cheaper plug or even a more expensive drain plug may have. Overall if you are looking for a magnetic drain plug this is the best magnetic drain plug available in my opinion.
Table of contents:
1) Risk of a Cheap aluminium or brass drain plug
2) Benefits of titanium drain plugs over aluminium and brass drain plugs
a) Defining metal tensile strength and yield strength
b) Metal tensile strength and yield strengths
c) Summary of why cheap drain plugs fail
3) Turner motorsports titanium oil drain plug
a) Quick overview with pictures
b) Specs
i) Thread pitch
ii) Diameter
iii) Hex size
iv) Copper washer fitment
v) Magnetic strength and talk about surface area
c) Images of the drain plug fully installed
d) Addressing some concerns
i) Stripping threads
ii) Drain Plug diameter
iii) Drain Plug thread pitch
iv) Magnets coming loose
v) Head rounding off
e) Additional stock drain bolt images
f) Summary
Risk of a cheap aluminium or brass drain plug:
So why should you use a titanium magnetic drain plug over a brass or aluminium drain plug? There are a few reasons for this, but one reason is cheaply made plugs often found on aliexpress can have the incorrect thread pitch or bolt diameter leaving your oil pan threads stripped (and if you own an ///M vehicle the oil pans are $1000 USD so it is best not to risk it), more on this later on. Another reason is because the weaker brass and aluminium drain plugs are susceptible to breaking at quite low torque specs and this can leave the end of the plug stuck in the oil drain pan threads resulting in a huge hassle to extract this portion of the bolt.
Here are some examples of this:
https://f87.bimmerpost.com/forums/showpost.php?p=25733984&postcount=7
This m2C owner has had an aluminium magnetic drain plug snap in the oil pan long before the torque required to crush the copper washer was achieved.
Credit: Diamente Post #16 https://www.toyotanation.com/thread...in-plug-inside-oil-pan.1558738/#post-13124826
Credit: Diamente Post #16 https://www.toyotanation.com/thread...in-plug-inside-oil-pan.1558738/#post-13124826
In these images you see a toyota owner with a broken magnetic drain plug from Greddy which is also aluminium.
The benefits of titanium drain plugs over aluminium and brass drain plugs:
Defining metal tensile strength and yield strength:
To explain this we must go into terms such as yield strength, and tensile strength.
Yield Strength: How much force it takes to induce plastic deformation and permanently deform the bolt, meaning the bolt is permanently stretched and will not spring back to its preloaded length after releasing (unscrewing) the fastener. This is an important metric because if the yield strength is too low you can end up stretching a drain bolt over and over again while torquing a plug resulting in its fatigue and eventual failure.
Tensile Strength: How much force a bolt is able to resist in its axial (lengthwise) direction before failing aka snapping/breaking.
Before we go into the strength comparison below we need to note that the turner motorsports titanium drain plug is made out of grade 5 Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy.
Metal Tensile and Yield Strengths:
Titanium Grade 5 Ti-6Al-4V Alloy: Tensile strength = ≥ 895 MPa, Yield strength = ≥ 828 MPa
Credit: https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=9299
Brass: Tensile strength = 360 MPa, Yield strength = 140 MPa
Credit: https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=6380
Aluminium 6061 Alloy: Tensile Strength = 310 MPa, Yield Strength = 276 MPa
Credit: https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=6636
So looking at this data we can see titanium (Ti-6Al-4V alloy used by turner motorsports in their drain plug) is nearly ~3X stronger than both the 6061 aluminium alloy and brass alloys in terms of tensile strength. The titanium is also nearly ~4x stronger than aluminium in terms of yield strength and nearly ~8X stronger than brass in terms of yield strength. So straight off the bat we are dealing with a significantly stronger metal meaning it will take much higher torques to break a drain plug made of this material, and you are more likely to strip the threads out of your aluminium drain pan before breaking the plug in terms of maximum torque you can apply. This is great because the common reports of failure was that cheaper plugs broke before the prescribed torque specs were reached, so making these plugs out of titanium will prevent that from ever happening, and prevent fatigue induced failures. This is even more important because magnetic drain plugs are hollow inside for magnet placement, so they are already weaker than solid bolts so a strong metal is really vital to avoid breaks.
Quickly looking at the cheaper plugs we can speculate that they fail due to the following reasons:
1) The problem normally occurs because of the fact that alot of people working on these cars do not use torque wrenches or poorly calibrated torque wrenches. You commonly hear of owners saying “it is tight when it is tight”, “wrist tight”, “one ugga dugga” etc. When gauging how much torque or how tight they should have their drain bolts. Well this is a problem especially on cheaper magnetic drain plugs because they are made of aluminium or brass which has a really low tensile strength which you can easily exceed if you are not being careful and thus end up breaking the bolt.
2) Reuse of old copper washers. I can’t believe I even have to bring this up but the copper washers are single use only, once they are crushed down they are finished. If you reuse them at the bmw prescribed torque they will leak and if you try to stop the leak with more torque to crush it down more then you will either strip your pan or break your bolt.
3) Even if tensile strength limits of a bolt is not exceeded one can still reach the yield point of the bolt which can cause permanent plastic deformation of the bolt forever weakening it due to fatigue (this is why you should never reuse torque to yield bolts). Over time if this is done alot your bolt will snap.
4) The bolt gets a bit seized due to road debris (this one is not very likely because bmw puts a nice cover to protect the drain plug, unless you have an M car because the stiffening plate does not have a cover, but the situation as a whole is also no likely unless you live in a really dirty environment) and the force it take to break the bolt free is higher than the tensile strength of the bolt resulting in breaks.
5) Metal impurities weakening the metal
Overall I have seen alot of horror stories of aluminium and brass drain bolts snapping inside of the oil sump, and this is what prevented me from buying a magnetic drain plug until finally Turner motorsports solved this issue by releasing a magnetic drain plug made out of titanium. This stronger metal that the turner motorsports drain plug is constructed out of should prevent any breaking issues regardless if you over tighten it (you are more likely to strip out your oil pan threads so please use a properly calibrated torque wrench these sumps are expensive to replace at $1k for M vehicles and alot of labour costs as well if you cannot diy, and the walls of the drain hole are so thin you cannot timersert or helicoil it), the bolt gets seized from road debris, and even if there were small impurities in the metal the overall strength of titanium should be high enough to compensate and prevent failure.
Turner motorsports titanium magnetic drain plug:
Quick overview - with pictures:
So lets begin our over view of this magnetic drain plug!
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
So in this product review I will be taking a look at the turner motorsports titanium magnetic drain plug, and why this is the only magnetic drain plug you should buy for your bmw. Before we begin I must thank ECS tuning/Turner motorsports for giving me a partial discount on the products that I will be using in this review, however I will be as unbiased as possible despite that.
Disclaimer:
Any technical advice, installation instruction, or product installation is done so at your own risk I will not be responsible for personal injuries, injuries to others or any living being, or any damage to your car, or any property damage.
Credits:
Images and videos used in this review are all property of their rightful owners as credited below each image, I am just using them for the purpose of this review but if you (the owner of the image) would like them removed please let me know via pm. Otherwise thanks to the owners (I made sure to credit your online name and link where I found the photo) of the photos, without you this review would be so much more bland.
Quick intro for those of you that don’t like long articles:
Cheap magnetic drain plugs made of brass or aluminium commonly break leaving the body of the bolt inside your drain pan resulting in alot of struggles to extract it. Cheap magnetic drain plugs can also have incorrect thread pitches and diameters that will result in damage to your oil pan threads. These cheap magnetic drain plugs can also utilize cheap neodymium magnets that loose their magnetic abilities at temperatures lower than what your engine oil gets to during operating conditions, this means that the magnetic drain plug will let go of all the metal debris it has stuck to until it cools down meaning it is essentially useless. The turner motorsports titanium magnetic drain plug address all of these issues and provides a magnetic drain plug that has no flaws that a cheaper plug or even a more expensive drain plug may have. Overall if you are looking for a magnetic drain plug this is the best magnetic drain plug available in my opinion.
Table of contents:
1) Risk of a Cheap aluminium or brass drain plug
2) Benefits of titanium drain plugs over aluminium and brass drain plugs
a) Defining metal tensile strength and yield strength
b) Metal tensile strength and yield strengths
c) Summary of why cheap drain plugs fail
3) Turner motorsports titanium oil drain plug
a) Quick overview with pictures
b) Specs
i) Thread pitch
ii) Diameter
iii) Hex size
iv) Copper washer fitment
v) Magnetic strength and talk about surface area
c) Images of the drain plug fully installed
d) Addressing some concerns
i) Stripping threads
ii) Drain Plug diameter
iii) Drain Plug thread pitch
iv) Magnets coming loose
v) Head rounding off
e) Additional stock drain bolt images
f) Summary
Risk of a cheap aluminium or brass drain plug:
So why should you use a titanium magnetic drain plug over a brass or aluminium drain plug? There are a few reasons for this, but one reason is cheaply made plugs often found on aliexpress can have the incorrect thread pitch or bolt diameter leaving your oil pan threads stripped (and if you own an ///M vehicle the oil pans are $1000 USD so it is best not to risk it), more on this later on. Another reason is because the weaker brass and aluminium drain plugs are susceptible to breaking at quite low torque specs and this can leave the end of the plug stuck in the oil drain pan threads resulting in a huge hassle to extract this portion of the bolt.
Here are some examples of this:
https://f87.bimmerpost.com/forums/showpost.php?p=25733984&postcount=7
This m2C owner has had an aluminium magnetic drain plug snap in the oil pan long before the torque required to crush the copper washer was achieved.
Credit: Diamente Post #16 https://www.toyotanation.com/thread...in-plug-inside-oil-pan.1558738/#post-13124826
Credit: Diamente Post #16 https://www.toyotanation.com/thread...in-plug-inside-oil-pan.1558738/#post-13124826
In these images you see a toyota owner with a broken magnetic drain plug from Greddy which is also aluminium.
The benefits of titanium drain plugs over aluminium and brass drain plugs:
Defining metal tensile strength and yield strength:
To explain this we must go into terms such as yield strength, and tensile strength.
Yield Strength: How much force it takes to induce plastic deformation and permanently deform the bolt, meaning the bolt is permanently stretched and will not spring back to its preloaded length after releasing (unscrewing) the fastener. This is an important metric because if the yield strength is too low you can end up stretching a drain bolt over and over again while torquing a plug resulting in its fatigue and eventual failure.
Tensile Strength: How much force a bolt is able to resist in its axial (lengthwise) direction before failing aka snapping/breaking.
Before we go into the strength comparison below we need to note that the turner motorsports titanium drain plug is made out of grade 5 Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy.
Metal Tensile and Yield Strengths:
Titanium Grade 5 Ti-6Al-4V Alloy: Tensile strength = ≥ 895 MPa, Yield strength = ≥ 828 MPa
Credit: https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=9299
Brass: Tensile strength = 360 MPa, Yield strength = 140 MPa
Credit: https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=6380
Aluminium 6061 Alloy: Tensile Strength = 310 MPa, Yield Strength = 276 MPa
Credit: https://www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=6636
So looking at this data we can see titanium (Ti-6Al-4V alloy used by turner motorsports in their drain plug) is nearly ~3X stronger than both the 6061 aluminium alloy and brass alloys in terms of tensile strength. The titanium is also nearly ~4x stronger than aluminium in terms of yield strength and nearly ~8X stronger than brass in terms of yield strength. So straight off the bat we are dealing with a significantly stronger metal meaning it will take much higher torques to break a drain plug made of this material, and you are more likely to strip the threads out of your aluminium drain pan before breaking the plug in terms of maximum torque you can apply. This is great because the common reports of failure was that cheaper plugs broke before the prescribed torque specs were reached, so making these plugs out of titanium will prevent that from ever happening, and prevent fatigue induced failures. This is even more important because magnetic drain plugs are hollow inside for magnet placement, so they are already weaker than solid bolts so a strong metal is really vital to avoid breaks.
Quickly looking at the cheaper plugs we can speculate that they fail due to the following reasons:
1) The problem normally occurs because of the fact that alot of people working on these cars do not use torque wrenches or poorly calibrated torque wrenches. You commonly hear of owners saying “it is tight when it is tight”, “wrist tight”, “one ugga dugga” etc. When gauging how much torque or how tight they should have their drain bolts. Well this is a problem especially on cheaper magnetic drain plugs because they are made of aluminium or brass which has a really low tensile strength which you can easily exceed if you are not being careful and thus end up breaking the bolt.
2) Reuse of old copper washers. I can’t believe I even have to bring this up but the copper washers are single use only, once they are crushed down they are finished. If you reuse them at the bmw prescribed torque they will leak and if you try to stop the leak with more torque to crush it down more then you will either strip your pan or break your bolt.
3) Even if tensile strength limits of a bolt is not exceeded one can still reach the yield point of the bolt which can cause permanent plastic deformation of the bolt forever weakening it due to fatigue (this is why you should never reuse torque to yield bolts). Over time if this is done alot your bolt will snap.
4) The bolt gets a bit seized due to road debris (this one is not very likely because bmw puts a nice cover to protect the drain plug, unless you have an M car because the stiffening plate does not have a cover, but the situation as a whole is also no likely unless you live in a really dirty environment) and the force it take to break the bolt free is higher than the tensile strength of the bolt resulting in breaks.
5) Metal impurities weakening the metal
Overall I have seen alot of horror stories of aluminium and brass drain bolts snapping inside of the oil sump, and this is what prevented me from buying a magnetic drain plug until finally Turner motorsports solved this issue by releasing a magnetic drain plug made out of titanium. This stronger metal that the turner motorsports drain plug is constructed out of should prevent any breaking issues regardless if you over tighten it (you are more likely to strip out your oil pan threads so please use a properly calibrated torque wrench these sumps are expensive to replace at $1k for M vehicles and alot of labour costs as well if you cannot diy, and the walls of the drain hole are so thin you cannot timersert or helicoil it), the bolt gets seized from road debris, and even if there were small impurities in the metal the overall strength of titanium should be high enough to compensate and prevent failure.
Turner motorsports titanium magnetic drain plug:
Quick overview - with pictures:
So lets begin our over view of this magnetic drain plug!
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source
Credit: F87source