This filter was in use for 4940 miles and 4 months following an engine reseal. There were gasket scrapings in between the pleats, not visible in the photos. I'm surprised the visible gasket scraping made it past the oil pickup screen.
No defects that I can detect on this filter, though I'm not sure the metal part in the second photo is supposed to be loose like that.








I had a magnet on the can, so some ferrous metal got collected.
Bellow see a comparison of inlet holes to an older KN HP2009.

That's the bypass valve assembly located at the base plate end, and it's normal for it to be loose after the filter is cut open. The coil spring in the dome end keeps all the internal parts tight together.

Looks great.

The "metal piece" you are referring to is the bypass valve, it just sits on top of the end cap. The spring at the bottom of the filter forces everything together tightly, making a good seal between the parts of the filter.

Thanks for posting!

Thanks for the comments!
The bypass valve has been tightly attached to the filter element on other K&N filters of a similar contruction that I've cut.

Filter looks good at ~5k miles. Typical Wix/Napa Gold quality construction IME. Bypass valve designed as explained above.

Something doesn't add up though. 97 Nissan Maxima calls for the Wix/NG 5/7356 (7317) oil filter which uses metric threads. The topic filter uses SAE threads. I thought the filter looked tall/large for a Nissan filter application.

Perhaps a remote/relocation filter kit on the Maxima?

Thanks for c&p.

Just make sure you didn't damage the threads on where the filter screws in...





Came here to say this.

I have a Maxima of this vintage, which takes the 57356, which uses a different thread than the 51516 uses

Also, the filter on this car is mounted sideways, and points to the side of the car, located near the right tire, not really enough room to fit a 51516!

Good catch.
I had my father make me a filter mounting nipple before he retired. It has 20mmx1.5 on one side and 3/4x16 on the other. I switched this for the original so I could use my extensive stash of 3/4x16 oil filters and use larger filters at that (the larger 20mmx1.5 options I used in the past are extinct).

See the above post for the nipple switch.
The 51516 has enough room to not even touch the splash guard, there's about 1 cm clearance to the splash guard. Now if you run wide tires that possibly rub the splash guard you might run into issues.

Make sure to swap it back if you ever sell or trade-in the car, otherwise a future owner is going to have a problem using the specified filter for the car.

Absolutely, in fact I have the original nipple on the car right now, as I want to use up the rest of my filters in 20mmx1.5.

^^^

Interesting, first time I've seen that mentioned here. When I looked at the filter I thought, back in 97 Nissan used a significantly larger filter. Then I looked it up. Now many Nissans spec the smallest filter, 6607 size.

Fairly ingenious I'd say.