Blackstone says oil filter brand doesn't matter!!?

[dparm]

I think most motors will well outlast the "damage" caused by cheaper filters. It's the rest of the car that starts to fall apart. When was the last time a car blew an engine because of a filter?

If it's any consolation, many of us German car owners can only use one filter...the OEM one. But my OEM Hengst/Mahle/Mann is always showing 0.2% or better.

 

[PontiacFan]

Originally Posted By: dparm
I think most motors will well outlast the "damage" caused by cheaper filters. It's the rest of the car that starts to fall apart. When was the last time a car blew an engine because of a filter?


+1

 

[danwat1234]

RESPONSE from Blackstone Labs regarding this thread;
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Dan,

Thanks for the email and for the link. The % insolubles test is a great one to do because it takes into account all the different sizes of particles. What we do it fill a test tube with oil and ether (ether helps the particles to settle out). We then spin the sample in a centrifuge for several minutes, take the sample out, and dump the oil/ether mixture. What's left on the bottom of the test tube is the insolubles that the oil filter didn't catch. Theoretically, if you have a filter that filters down to ten micros, what we see should be a whole bunch of 10-micron-or-less particles. To get an idea of how big the actual particles are we'd have to do a particle count test, which we can do if you're ever interested. That tells you how many particles are less than or equal to 2, 5, 10, 15, 25, 50, and 100 microns. Hope that answers your question. If there's anything else I can do for you, don't hesitate to ask. Have great day.

Alex Miller
Blackstone Laboratories
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[ltslimjim]

^I think a particle count(PC) would be definitely 'interesting' to find out in the event of considerably high insols.

One user has already done so on the forums recently. Over the course of a couple years, he ran same oil and as many variables as 'the same' as possible and go UOAs + PC. IIRC, to him the EP filters did seem to help compared to mid-tier or entry level in his app? As far as insol trending down and staying down also PC testing.

Each app is different and experiences vary.

 

[Spector]

Looks like what Blackstone has stated is what my personal test showed years ago, filters are pretty much useless appendages on modern engines and the particles that do get through are not large enough to cause wear. I ran two (yes very small sample) runs(OCI) of 15,000 miles, on one did not change the filter on the other changed the filter half way. UOA had no difference on the samples. This was enough to convince me that flow was the main ingredient in a filter that I needed and collecting particles of any size was a waste of time. Maybe would help in preventing some type of catastrophic failure but I doubt it.

I have to agree with Blackstone on this one