[Tom Vaught]

Brad, not wanting this to get out of context here, I see nothing wrong with the Bypass Filter philosophy, in general. We had to balance oil flow to a turbo that was run at max engine rpm +10% for several hours at a time. That portion of the testing was not done once but many times over a 300 hour dynometer test. Several hours of rpm at max torque rpm, several hours at max torque rpm = 10%, several hours at high load low rpm, you get the idea.

Also the manufactures typically specify hydrodynamic bearings for lots of applications. Hydrodynamic bearings pass through boundary and mixed-film modes during start-up, and shut down, or when faced with transient upset conditions. This means that material selection is an important design consideration for all sleeve bearings, no matter what their operating mode. The general attributes of a good bearing material are:

A low coefficient of friction versus hard shaft materials,
Good wear behavior against steel journals (scoring resistance),
The ability to absorb and discard small contaminant particles (embedibility),
The ability to adapt and adjust to the shaft roughness and misalignment (conformability),
High compressive strength,
High fatigue strength,
Corrosion resistance,
Low shear strength (at the bearing-to shaft interface),
Structural uniformity, and
Reasonable cost and ready availability.

So the very small micron particles you are referencing (being removed by the by-pass filter) are somewhat incorporated into the bearing design. The "embedibility" feature.
The bearing material basically absorbs the very small particles.

If you run a hard race bearing (on the street) then maybe the by-pass filter might help the bearing life. Most race engines get inspected much more often (as you know) vs accumulating 250,000 miles before a rebuild. Hobby cars might see 3K miles or less in a year.

Tom V.