Fram XG9018 @ ~11,600 - media failure

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Jay - it is posts like these that have convinced me back to Fram. You seem to represent a quality company that cares about their customers. Thanks for posting on here!
 
Originally Posted By: FetchFar
Any holes or tears are unacceptable. Still, its a small hole here.


So a hole in a Fram is all fine. But a hole in a Purolator means that it's end of the world as we know it?
 
I mentioned above that there wasn't one Purolator tear reported. And Jay didn't come back with a generic answer to not stockpile filters and hope for the best in the future.
wink.gif
 
At last, some pictures of the inside. I had to pry off the endcaps and invert the media to get a good picture.

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Best picture I could get of it while still assembled.

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The inverted media made a nice rosette.

And now, as requested. Detail pictures of the puncture from the inside:

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One last one to give you an idea of how thick the media is.

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Seems impossible that oil would have been able to do that. Was the box sealed when you bought it?
 
"Fram engineers perform hot oil circulation tests on the filter element and also regularly cut open used filters to examine how well they have withstood the rigors of actual use on a vehicle. For over 38 years, Fram end disks have stood up to hot oil and their adhesives have sealed off the dirty oil." --- Scott Jacobs, Fram Catalog/Technical Service Representative, (in an email to Mark Lawrence a few years ago)
 
Originally Posted By: hatt
Seems impossible that oil would have been able to do that. Was the box sealed when you bought it?


The media is nowhere near as strong as cellulose media. If oil can punch a square hole in an ecore or tear the media on a Purolator, I have no trouble accepting that it could push through this media.

Yes, the box was sealed and I examined the filter before installation. As I mentioned before, there's always a chance that I didn't notice the hole when the filter was new. I seriously doubt it, though. It's not a little pinhole.
 
Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
What's up with that center tube? Looks like an E-core.

That's the only design on the 2.2 Ecotec AFAIK.
 
^ Yeah. Plastic cage (plus the wire backing in this case). I don't think I've seen "media blowout" like the typical fear with e-cores though.

The pronto I just took out is the same plastic cage design, as is the AC Delco and Puro.
 
Originally Posted By: 99Saturn
Originally Posted By: Merkava_4
What's up with that center tube? Looks like an E-core.

That's the only design on the 2.2 Ecotec AFAIK.


Because it's a cartridge filter, not a spin-on.
 
Originally Posted By: Brybo86
odd the difference between this and pure one failure thread....

pure one thread people are vowing to boycott all purolator until they work it out....

fram ultra thread everyone is saying any filter can fail, ya ya ya, ok so when the OLM can go over 10k on my car I cant use an ultra? what does fram recommend then?

a failure is a failure and they should be treated the same.


No they should not be treated the same. The Purolator issue is widespread. This is the first media failure of an Ultra reported on here. Plus, this was a pin hole, Puro's like to rip large tears in the pleats. But yes, either way this was a failure and Fram should make it right for the customer.
 
thanks for the update MK nice work on taking apart the filter.

Not sure how synthetic media is manufactured, but is fairly easy to see how this could have happened.

Perhaps the fibers were not as tightly weaved together as they should have, maybe a thin spot in the media, or physical damage that weakened the media during handling and manufacturing.

Either way I sure hope this doesn't become a trend.
 
The wire screen really did it's job here.

Even if you continued to use this filter until 15,000 miles, you can see that the pin-hole cannot "grow" into a huge tear.
 
So this is an XG = Xtra Guard filter? I thought they were discontinued & replaced with Ultra

How is the media sprayed on the wire? Held with glue? What keeps it from falling back off?
 
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