It may be reversed.... Baldwin making filters for Champion.
Consider this: Baldwin offers over 4800 filter part numbers ref:
http://www.baldwinfilter.com/inside/history.html That's a lot of numbers!! B50 is a Baldwin number and the exact same is a LF117 Hastings, Same filter, but now 2 numbers..maybe more that I'm un-aware of. Would be funny if Baldwin was making the filters for Champion (and others).
Baldwin manufactures filter componenets rather than just assemble them. Ref:
http://www.baldwinfilter.com/inside/man.html
In September of 1995 Hastings Manufacturing
http://www.hastingsmanufacturing.com sold it's filter operations and assets to CLARCOR, Inc. of Rockford, IL. That sale included the plants of Yankton, SD and Knoxville, TN. Ref:
http://www.hastingsmanufacturing.com/hastings_tradition.htm
On a corporate basis, Baldwin Fiters has been a part of CLARCOR, Inc since 1981, long before the sale of Hastings plants to the CLARCOR corporaton.
You can call Hastings Mfg at 269-945-2491, as I did the other day and ask if they make filters. The answer I got was NO.. we make piston rings.
Now if Baldwin is making over 4800 filter part numbers, that may just be a slick way of skirting around the fact that they make so many for so many other smaller companies that sell filters under a "brand" name.
I called and talked to tech at Hastings Filter (not Hastings Manufacturing), and they said their filters are made at Kearney at the Baldwin Mfg faciclity (along with some made at Yankton,SD). I call Baldwin and their key engineers tell me that they make their own filters, and of course Hastings, as well as others, but one guy was not at liberty to say exactly for "whom".
Vern