Okay,, some O you Guru types can have a go at this part..


ow, I know this is going to be tough to understand, but, let's give it a shot. First, the fact that this test was conducted at all, suggests that there ARE various and wide ranging filtration efficiencies available on the market. Second, according to this study, moving from a 40 micron filter to a 15 micron filter reduced engine wear by 70%!

POP QUIZ: How much longer will your engine last if you can reduce engine WEAR by 70%? It's actually NOT what you probably think. It's not 70%. Consider this. If you cut engine wear in HALF (50%), it makes sense that engine life should be DOUBLED. Thus, cutting engine wear by 70% (considerably more than 50%) will actually FAR MORE THAN DOUBLE your engine's useful lifespan.

The added cost? Believe it or not, the difference in price between a standard 30 or 40 micron paper media oil filter and a premium synthetic media 15 micron filter is only about $10 per filter (maybe even less in many instances). Now, on the surface, if you didn't know how much engine wear you could save by upgrading your filter, that might seem like a HUGE increase.

But, consider this. First, some of these higher efficiency oil filters are actually designed for longer change intervals (as much as 4 or 5 times as long - easily making up for the additional filter cost). But, even if they weren't. Even if you changed them every 3,000 - 6,000 miles like a cheaper conventional filter, over the life of your vehicle, the additional filter cost would amount to (AT THE ABSOLUTE MOST) about $500 over 150,000 miles.

That's peanuts compared to the savings in engine wear and the increased engine longevity. We already said that you could easily save between $2,500 and $4,000 PER YEAR by doubling your vehicle's useful life. Over 10 years that's a savings of $25 - $40,000 for a simple $500 expenditure in filter upgrades.

Sound reasonable? at all?

Exactly what I was thinking...
If you're getting more filtration from the same size filter, it stands to reason that this filter will clog up sooner... as it's capturing more stuff...
Run with a clogged filter, and you might as well run with no oil at all...
So if you run with a more efficient filter it seems like you need to change it more often.  

Super small particles will cause less wear than larger ones, so there must be a point of diminishing returns on filtration...
You want a filter that will capture particles of a size that will cause wear, but not clog itself up with smaller ones that don't, thereby allowing maximum oil circulation...

(I said, "thereby",... how cool is that?)...  ...

Serowbot thats why you should change filters every time.

bill67 wrote on 06/19/11 at 08:34:39:

Probably right, Bill..
It's just that I'm so lazy, and that's the yukky part of the oil change... if I didn't do an alternating fluid change, I'd probably still go the same interval on the filter...
I'd just spend 2,500 miles saying,...
"I really should do an oil change, soon"... ...

I change the filter more then the oil.