My viewpoint is that it takes a better efficiency oil filter to achieve cleaner oil. Cleaner oil will always result in less wear with all other factors held constant, especially the longer the OCI, where a higher filter efficiency would benefit the most. Based on lots of studies, there certainly could be a wear level difference over the long run due to filtering efficiency - I'm talking a 99% @ 20u vs a 50% @ 20u or a 99% @40+ micron filter. It's not going to make a noticeable difference over an OCI or two ... it's over the long haul of the vehicle. Graph below shows the difference between 99% @ 20u, 30u and 40u filtration.I don't think he said that the oil filter is not important so take it out completely. He is saying that it won't matter if the oil filter is smaller or bigger, it doesn't matter if the oil filter is 99% at 20 microns or at 30 microns, use whatever oil filter you want and don't worry about it. But make sure you use a good air filter and make sure that it filters as it should because that will destroy an engine in short time.
In other words, use whatever oil filter and your engine won't know the difference.
The bottom line is that the oil filter is the last thing to take care of any debris that enters the oil, regardless if that debris in generated internally inside the engine or is ingested from outside the engine, like from a bad or inefficient air filter. It's just funny that some people seem to believe that filtering oil better than not doesn't make any difference ... guess that's because their engine doesn't "blow-up" when using a low efficiency filter, which seems to be a common metric for if something works "good" or not in an engine.
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