>>David says he cleans the screen and I can't argue with him too much.  OTOH,
>>I don't.

>All I can offer is that sometimes I do find debris in the screen.  Usually
>looks like small pieces of gasket material and other unidentifiable stuff.
>If you found any metal in there, it could serve as an early warning for
>engine trouble whereas most of us don't cut open our oil filters to see
>what they caught...

Heavy stuff will tend to fall straight down and not circulate. I pulled the
pickup tube on a watercooled I'm overhauling last weekend. It has a screen,
and the screen was 3/4 full of chunks of RTV sealant and chips of carbon.
This vehicle has a perfectly good oil filter system but that didn't save
the screen from being nearly clogged.

--Ken
  68 Westy, 71 Bus