Ok it seems testing fever has inflicted me courtesy of this site. I've been running a K&N drop in filter on my 4Runner and have had good results with it so far. But, I wanted to see if changing to a paper filter would show a decrease in Si when I sample the oil at the end of this interval. Even though I'm 1/2 way through the interval, I decided to change the filter out to a new paper one of some brand or another
I stopped at Autozone and did the quick quality comparison between a Fram and an STP filter and the results are about the same as we've seen with oil filters. The Fram is a cheap looking POS compared to the STP.
The Fram has 21 coarse pleats vs. 51 on the STP, and the media of the STP seems much finer grained. What's more, no glue is visible on the Fram to hold the element to the plastic frame. The STP on the other hand has a solid bead of adhesive to seal and secure the element to the plastic.
And to top it off, the STP is $4 cheaper. It was an easy choice. I bought the STP and left.
Edit: One thing I did notice when I changed the filter. The intake box on the engine side is perfectly clean to the eye so the K&N must not have any major problems...
[ September 21, 2003, 09:40 PM: Message edited by: jsharp ]
I stopped at Autozone and did the quick quality comparison between a Fram and an STP filter and the results are about the same as we've seen with oil filters. The Fram is a cheap looking POS compared to the STP.
The Fram has 21 coarse pleats vs. 51 on the STP, and the media of the STP seems much finer grained. What's more, no glue is visible on the Fram to hold the element to the plastic frame. The STP on the other hand has a solid bead of adhesive to seal and secure the element to the plastic.
And to top it off, the STP is $4 cheaper. It was an easy choice. I bought the STP and left.
Edit: One thing I did notice when I changed the filter. The intake box on the engine side is perfectly clean to the eye so the K&N must not have any major problems...
[ September 21, 2003, 09:40 PM: Message edited by: jsharp ]