Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Quote:
Bill, I have to disagree. First, OK, whatever the endcaps are, they are NOT sufficient to keep the pleats rigidly in place. In the original picture, you can see the "wavy" shape, and see how the pleats pulled and spread, because they did not have anything holding them firmly in place.
I'm not sure of your point here. Most Champ filters have a variable spread of the pleats on the side where the seam meets (or is that seams meet?). A human pinches the glued pieces together. I don't think that this process has changed at Champ. You'll usually have 3/5 of the thing normal looking ..and a "spread-bunch" section.
Sure, there is some flex in the pleats themselves, and yes, they are not evenly spaced (remember, I've taken apart M1, KN, VC, and STP variants of the CL filters). What I mean is that at least the attachment to the caps, and the caps themselves, is very rigid. And In the USED CL filters I've cut up, I've never seen splaying, warping, or twisting of the pleats like we see in this one. Unless the element in a CL filter actually tore away from the cap cement, the pleats could not splay or spread as this one did.
The damage in the OP's filter seems two-fold. First, there's the splaying/spreading of the pleats. Then, of course, there's the breach. I assume, but certainly can't say for sure, that the two are related. Assuming so, then I doubt a CL would have breached this way, as I don't think it could have splayed that far.