Too Many Posts
Joined: Feb 2005
Posts: 28,312
Cincinnati, Ohio
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Quote:
I generally use hastings. Sometimes hard to find, worth buying 6 or 12 off the internet and keep my own stock. Fortunately three of my vehicles use the same filter. Here is a little write-up and link that I found interesting. Also hastings site has a lot of info about media, micron ratings, and more importantly in filter bypass.
Some vehicles handle by-pass in the motor, some need a by-pass in the filter.
http://www.efficient-mileage.com/oil-filters.html
Choose an Oil Filter by brand
Purolator, Mobil1, Motorcraft, Mann, and Amsoil.
(and Supertech which is the Walmart brand if you're really on a tight budget)
That's it. It's a short list. That makes it easy to remember.
Purolator Pure One and K&N oil filters are decent. However the media seems dense enough to impede the passage of oil. Those filters are built well.
MANN+HUMMEL & Bosch own Purolator as of 2006. Purolator was previously an ArvinMeritor product and considered to be one of the finest oil filters in the business. MANN+HUMMEL also make oil filters for the German car manufacturers, BMW, Audi, and Porsche. I'm impressed by the construction of the Mann filter. Bosch outsources their oil filters to Champion Labs. And the Bosch filters are awful.
Hastings manufactures Amsoil, Baldwin, and Hastings oil filters. All good stuff.
Champion Labs produces oil filters under a variety of names. Those include Fram, STP, SuperTech, Delphi, Bosch, Mobil1, K&N, AC Delco, and a few others too insignificant to mention. There's a lot of Good, Bad, and Ugly in there.
Notes:
amsoil specs a media not made by hastings (who may use outside manufacturers for their media as well?).
**wix is not mentioned above and:
NAPA Gold AND CarQuest Premium ARE the regular Wix.
The lower series of NAPA are made by Wix, but are a little lower quality.
I think it more important to chose a good filter you are cmfortable with and know the vehicle it is running. An occasional oil analysis might lead to extended change intervals, but should not be relied on. An poorly tuned older carbureted vehicle is going to need more frequent changes than a new efi or well tuned older vehicle.
Diesel will always require short interval changes. 
I was beginning to think I was the only one using Hastings, I knew they were a good filter because they are not the cheapest and sold by real hard core parts store. Not a retail type filter.
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