It appears that the entry drainback valve is cut on the end. Also, you do know that this engine is a known sludger to put so many miles on a filter. It's just asking for itFilter was on a 2002 ES300 for 4 years, 2 months. 24,350 total miles over three oil changes. 332,400 total miles on the car.
- Impressive as it sits horizontally under the exhaust header, which will bake ADBVs and cause drain-down.
- Robust appearance and no visible dirt/grit in pleats or in filter body.
- Any damage pictured is from cutting open the can and prying out the filter (can somewhat crushed in removing and I clipped the ADBV with the snips when opening).
- You may also note the can defeated the (apparently cheap) tin snips I was using and broke the tip off.
I love these as I can skip the difficult filter change until the 3rd oil change, and not suffer for it. I replaced it with one I bought at the same time, back in 2019. This car was doing 15 to 20k miles a year, but not since Covid. New driver (my retired father) and much less miles. I refilled it with 5qts NAPA 10w30 full syn + 5ozs LubeGard Blue. I am not as strict about always using Mobil 1 10w-30 HM like I used to be; adding the LubeGard has made me relax a bit on that. Miles 150k to 300k were mostly all on M1 10w-30 HM.
View attachment 181804
View attachment 181805
View attachment 181806
View attachment 181807
View attachment 181809
View attachment 181810
This is what is so demanding on filters on this engine (Toyota 1MZ-E). Filter is right under the exhaust header. I have to use a claw wrench to get them out and that usually crushes them. Most filter’s ADBV will cook fairly quickly but the Fram Ultra ones never do.
View attachment 181811
Fram Ultra 3614 cut open. 4 years/24,350 miles.
- Thread starter Oro_O
- Start date
He said in post 1 that he clipped the ADBV with the tin snips.
I don’t think it is-there would be a LOT more debris in the can if it was loaded up. The 2-ply synthetic depth media OG filter is very hard to load up, the 19,700 mile XG3600 on my xB (2 10K M1 EP 5W30 OCIs) just had some carbon bits in the can, very little in the pleats. Mine looked like 30K+ was possible, although rust would have killed the can (bad paint, metal too thin).
It definitely was not loaded at all. You couldn’t wring anything out of it or scrape anything out of it. No debris anywhere. And you are correct, it would have been easy to do 30k or 40k with it in a very clean and clean-running engine like this.
Yep, and someone mentioned that right away. I USED to use the oversize Motorcraft 400 (akin to 3600 - I think that’s the 400) and honestly don’t know why I didn’t - maybe the 3614 at the time was on a big sale or I forgot or something. In the future, I will.
This is from a field study on oil filter loading:
From this, for a FRAM Ultra of this size with a ~10 g capacity, the filter life would be 60k km (37k miles) for the average car, but under 20k km (12k miles) for the dirtiest 10% of engines. The study used 1.2 to 2.0 L engines, with the filters in larger engines loading up faster, so for a 3.0 L engine like in this Lexus, you could roughly cut those filter life figures in half to 19k and 6k miles.
24k miles may be pushing it, even with a FRAM Ultra on a Toyota. I'm not sure if you can determine if a filter is clogged just by looking at the filter media or oil. A UOA with particle counts or filter dP measurements would be the definitive way of knowing.
From this, for a FRAM Ultra of this size with a ~10 g capacity, the filter life would be 60k km (37k miles) for the average car, but under 20k km (12k miles) for the dirtiest 10% of engines. The study used 1.2 to 2.0 L engines, with the filters in larger engines loading up faster, so for a 3.0 L engine like in this Lexus, you could roughly cut those filter life figures in half to 19k and 6k miles.
24k miles may be pushing it, even with a FRAM Ultra on a Toyota. I'm not sure if you can determine if a filter is clogged just by looking at the filter media or oil. A UOA with particle counts or filter dP measurements would be the definitive way of knowing.
A UOA particle count won't tell you anything about how loaded up the filter is, because you'd know nothing about how much debris the engine produced. Only a dP vs flow test comparing that to a new filter of the same make and model would give an idea of how much it's loaded. You could look at the max dP and see how close it is to the bypass setting, and if you had some kind of correlation between the dP vs flow curve as x viscosity for that specific oil filter you might be able to equate that to gram of debris captured. But that would be a whole science project that nobody here could do.
Another thing that could be done by anyone with an accurate scale is to fill the new oil filter completely with oil and weight it. Run the filter for however long, then do the same complete oil fill of the filter with the same oil and weight it again. The delta in weight would be how many grams the filter gained over the OCI.
Last edited:
That's one of them good ones with metal end caps, I don't think anyone hates on the old fram ultrass.
Nice! You got yourFilter was on a 2002 ES300 for 4 years, 2 months. 24,350 total miles over three oil changes. 332,400 total miles on the car.
- Impressive as it sits horizontally under the exhaust header, which will bake ADBVs and cause drain-down.
- Robust appearance and no visible dirt/grit in pleats or in filter body.
- Any damage pictured is from cutting open the can and prying out the filter (can somewhat crushed in removing and I clipped the ADBV with the snips when opening).
- You may also note the can defeated the (apparently cheap) tin snips I was using and broke the tip off.
I love these as I can skip the difficult filter change until the 3rd oil change, and not suffer for it. I replaced it with one I bought at the same time, back in 2019. This car was doing 15 to 20k miles a year, but not since Covid. New driver (my retired father) and much less miles. I refilled it with 5qts NAPA 10w30 full syn + 5ozs LubeGard Blue. I am not as strict about always using Mobil 1 10w-30 HM like I used to be; adding the LubeGard has made me relax a bit on that. Miles 150k to 300k were mostly all on M1 10w-30 HM.
View attachment 181804
View attachment 181805
View attachment 181806
View attachment 181807
View attachment 181809
View attachment 181810
This is what is so demanding on filters on this engine (Toyota 1MZ-E). Filter is right under the exhaust header. I have to use a claw wrench to get them out and that usually crushes them. Most filter’s ADBV will cook fairly quickly but the Fram Ultra ones never do.
View attachment 181811
’s worth out of that filter.
It’s hard to tell the condition of the filter media without cutting it apart and squeezing out all the oil in a press. Then you can actually see the carbon build up.
Looks good overall. I’ve ran oil filters for 2-3x oil change intervals for years. No issues. Filters always look good when I cut them apart.
Looks good overall. I’ve ran oil filters for 2-3x oil change intervals for years. No issues. Filters always look good when I cut them apart.
@Linctex ran a plain Motorcraft something like 30k and it was still fine, and I think a ToughGuard nearly 50k! Those threads are here on the board.
Baldwin filters are built well, but their efficiency is not phenomenal and they don’t do synthetic media in any filter I’ve seen of theirs.
Donaldson filters for diesel apps that have their Synteq media are great, but for some reason Donaldson doesn’t offer their best media in sizes that work for most cars. If you’ve got a Cummins, Powerstroke, or Duramax you’re likely in luck.
Based on what I see, imo I don't believe topic filter so loaded it was at capacity. Not in bypass, when removed. That said, personally I likely would have swapped out for a new filter after the second oci, ~16k miles assuming ~8k mi for each. OG XG rated to 20k, 'to me' little cost benefit pushing it much beyond the rating.
Fwiw, I ran the same application OG XG 32 months to 14k miles, on 3.4L Tacoma, appeared fine when c&p here. I could have run it one more oci to ~5k miles, but I was satisfied with time frame that I got my money's worth. There have been other OG XG anecdotes to ~20k miles, have looked good too. The topic OG XG, a very stout full synthetic filter with solid holding capacity.
Fwiw, I ran the same application OG XG 32 months to 14k miles, on 3.4L Tacoma, appeared fine when c&p here. I could have run it one more oci to ~5k miles, but I was satisfied with time frame that I got my money's worth. There have been other OG XG anecdotes to ~20k miles, have looked good too. The topic OG XG, a very stout full synthetic filter with solid holding capacity.
OG Fram Ultras are/ were awesome.
Now the Fram Endurance is taking that mantle on. Just for a newer higher price of course.
Considering all the great things that Bidenomics has done for our economy and that First Brands has done to the rest of the Fram line, I'd say the $13 it now costs is bordering on a better bargain than the original XG.
Yeah $9 in 2019 is about $13 now especially with manufacturing.
Got your money's worth out of that one.
You have no faith in manufacturer's recommended numbers but ok with butter knife tests?
I said I have no faith in marketing numbers. Marketing departments generally aren't burdened with technical facts. If the manufacturer says the filter passes test x for standard y, then I'm good with that.
The butter knife isn't testing anything, just looking for visible debris.
Similar threads
