I have read that the bigger filters are better but some have slower flow rate.

 

The MOPAR is whats supposed to be run, the FL-1A is oversized and has been used by many people on jeeps. Its up to you...

They sell both at Walmart. Pick up the mopar in one hand, and your fram in the other. Theres a BIG difference.

 

Get a few different-brand filters for the same application - so it's an "all else being equal" comparison.

Then cut the baseplates off with a hacksaw or a large tubing cutter.

Then examine the innards.

Ah - here. I'll save you most of the trouble and just about all of the money (unless you want to confirm the findings.) http://people.msoe.edu/~yoderw/oilfi...lterstudy.html This study isn't all-inclusive, but it is certainly illustrative (when I was younger, I was able to secure some filter brands not acquired for this study. Looks like they've covered some brands that I didn't have access to (this was about twenty-five years ago, for me, and was an informal study...) and I do like how they present their empirical data.

Cost is not a reliable indicator of performance. Hell - how much of cost goes into paying for marketing? Look at Pennzoil - how long did they have Arnold Palmer as a spokesman? And I could always tell if someone had run Pennzoil in their engine, simply by scraping the sludge up out of the oil sump pan (I actually had a couple of engines that had gotten so sludged up from constant use of Pennzoil - with its high paraffin content - that the oil could not be drained from the sump by the drain plug. And believe me, taking off an eight-quart sump pan that still has two gallons of oil in it is no fun whatever...)

But Pennzoil usually costs more than the brands that I have used and prefer for a number of years - Valvoline and Castrol. Pennzoil runs more commercials than Valvoline and Castrol combined - and the money for that airtime has to come from somewhere. (And I wouldn't use Pennzoil in a two-stroke engine!)

Anyhow, I've run down the page, and the data on it are consistent with what I can remember from my own informal study. And, it saves me the trouble of repeating the effort, and giving me a ready-built reference instead (I've cut open plenty of oil filters, and not just for comparison of construction and materials. I've cut open far more for postmortem examination of the filter - and sometimes the engine! - and to see what got trapped in the media and, sometimes, if the media failed and the "filter" simply became a "reservoir". It's happened...) Nice to have a codified reference for any more "failure analysis" projects I might have dropped in my lap...

 

well honestly..yeah i go out and buy the frams cause its cheap...3.27 at walmart, but i also change my oil religiously so i dont believe the filter has a chance to take a crap. haha, but however. if you want a good filter for max filtration go with something that cost a lil more. and as far as i kno...there is no washable oil filter, but that would be an awesome invention

 

Yes a washable one would be great even if it was like 70 bucks I would buy it due to never haveing to buy one again. lol I change my filter ( most of the time fram) with every oil change(about 4000ish miles) But now knowing more on it I have no problem spending the extra 2 bucks or whatever it is. I dont like to buy the cheapist stuff or the most expencive either.

 

yeah exactly...i mean your already spending some cash on doin the oil change already, an extra couple bucks wont hurt, it will only help

 

Yeah - but what's the pore size on the media again? If it's too big, it doesn't matter how often you change your oil - the filter won't be catching anything problematic...

I've seen some "prefilters" out there that go in between the oil filter and mount - it's about a 600-u mesh. I've seen some remote prefilters that go down about 200-300-u, and both of these styles are washable.

There are also some "bypass filters" that take a portion of the oil low and run it through a superfine filter (something like 1-u?) on a separate circuit. The oil under pressure goes through the main "can" filter as a full-flow circuit, and a portion of that pressurised supply goes through the auxiliary filter and gets scrubbed and returned to the oil sump.

Here's one outfit doing bypass oil filters - http://www.gulfcoastfilters.com/. They're saying that typical wear particles are down around 10-u in size (true,) and that their filters will catch down to 1-5u (likely.) Since you're running it as a bypass filter element, oil starvation to the engine isn't as large of a problem.

And, since the oil itself doesn't wear out (merely the additive package,) and the big problem is that it picks up all of the particles (which the filters don't always catch,) they're saying you can run signficantly increased oil drain intervals.

Anyhow, that's a filter setup meant for heavy Diesels. Here's the one that Amsoil does - should fix pax vehicles: http://www.go-synthetic.com/By-pass/by-pass.htm

So, pillage around and see what you think. I do intend to eventually add this type of setup to my 88XJ (as part of a refit,) will probably put it on my wife's car (if I can find a place to mount the thing,) and will probably consider it on a heavy truck, when I finally get one (M35A2. WANT.)