Manufacturers Working to Make the Lowly Oil Filter Tougher

Canadians are continuing to buy new cars at a steady rate, but what industry watchers have been noticing for the past few years is that car owners are also keeping their vehicles longer than ever before. And as these automotive engines run longer, the lowly oil filter now becomes ever more important as the protective gatekeeper of the engine as the filter scoops out of the oil the microscopic particles that can grind engine parts to a halt.

In a June 2006 analysis on vehicle longevity, Canadian automotive analyst Dennis DesRosier says 64 per cent of light trucks and 53 per cent of passenger cars survive fifteen years of active ownership. DesRosier estimates 65 per cent of Canadian cars on the road today have about 100,000 kilometres on the odometer. Meanwhile, research out of the United States shows nearly 70 per cent of vehicles on the road have racked up more than 75,000 miles on their odometers.

New oil filter designs made to handle tougher driving habits

It is this trend that inspired FRAM, a unit of Honeywell Consumer Products Group, to introduce a new high-mileage filter, the FRAM High Mileage Oil Filer which uses a gel additive in the centre tube of the filter and dissolves into the oil with each pass through. The gel additive is made to help maintain oil viscosity, reduce corrosive engine wear, neutralize potentially destructive acids and make the automotive engine run cleaner. In Canada, FRAM also has the FRAM Extra Guard made for everyday driving conditions and the Extended Guard filter designed for longer change intervals.

“If you take a look at the vehicle population, the largest portion of cars on the road today is in that high mileage group,” said Megan Currie, marketing manager for Honeywell in Mississauga, Ont. “People with older vehicles have more sludging, more build up.”

Filter manufacturers and technicians say in addition to Canadian now driving their cars longer, many car owners are also stretching out intervals between oil and filter changes. The reason owners are doing this is because of the promise of extended oil change intervals and guarantees from car manufacturers.

However, service technicians warn consumers to read the car’s manual carefully. Often the extended change intervals promised are based on ‘normal’ driving conditions. And most technicians agree the average Canadian is driving under ‘severe’ conditions.

“A filter can last for a long, long time but the question is, even though you have the filter in the car and your filter is filtering your oil, at what stage are you getting the maximum efficiency out of your car,” said Ramon Nunez, Purolator Filters’ director of product management at its plant in Brentwood, Tenn. “We still think it is by changing the filter and the oil closer to the 3,000 mile interval.”

Why is changing the oil at 3,000 miles recommended? Because car engine oil is supposed to protect the engine from wear and provide lubrication. But over time, that oil breaks down and begins to accumulate dust, metallic shavings, condensation, and even antifreeze that can damage internal engine parts. A properly working oil filter will trap and remove those contaminants. If that debris is not removed, fuel efficiency is compromised and over the long term the engine can be damaged.

Could the cartridge oil filter make a comeback?

When car owners bring in their cars for oil and filter change, most mechanics are installing spin-on filters which have metal casings. But that could change as companies such as Purolator are looking at returning to cartridge-based design, where the filters are inserted into a permanent cartridge already built into the engine.

Cartridges-based filters are not a new idea, having been around in the 1950s, said Nunez.

“I think one of the big changes that we are seeing in the filter product category is that cartridge oil filters are becoming much more prevalent,” said Nunez. “You go back a couple of years and the cartridge filter was primarily something that the European models used,” said Nunez who added Purolator has been building a cartridge filter for three years now.

In March, German auto parts manufacturers Bosch Group and Mann+ Hummel acquired Purolator’s filters business in North America from ArvinMentor Inc.

“We see a big benefit in being associated with Mann+Hummel because they are a technology house of filtration and that is going to benefit Purolator filters,” said Nunez.

Advocates of the cartridge-based design say dropping production of the metal casing that houses spin-on filters will cut productions costs and help North American companies to compete with less expensive products coming in from Asia. They also argue that not having to worry about melting down the metal casings makes disposing of the used filters easier on the environment and less expensive.

“It’s a fully biodegradable product where as an oil filter, they get it, they crush it, you have to take it to a smelter and then you have to figure what to do with the smelt that you have,” said Nunez. “Cartridge filters have a progressed to where the basic design is a metal free cartridge, which means it can go into just any of the land fills available in the States.”

But there are skeptics. David Jensen is president of the Automotive Oil Change Association which represents the fast lube industry in Canada and the U.S. He said his association has studied the cartridge option and questions the environmental benefits of the cartridge-based filter, saying it doesn’t do anything about used filters and the contaminated oil it contains.

“The bottom line is that they don’t have a viable environmental solution for these things, the paper element and the oil is trapped in them and all of the plastic end caps are going in the trash,” said Jensen.

As well, auto technicians wonder if moving to a cartridge-base filter would hinder their ability to monitor any potential problems. Some say that with changing spin-on filters, they could see the condition of the filter. In particular, they could check to see if the by-pass valve which controls the flow of oil, was broken. With a cartridge-based filter, the by-pass valve would be in the engine and not on the filter and could not be checked as easily.

“The problem with the cartridge is that will not have by-pass valve,” said veteran Ottawa-area mechanic Derek Atwill. “The advantage of having spin-on is that when it is changed, you are assured that new valve would be there as well. With the cartridge, valve deterioration could not be detected.”

Synthetic challengers to traditional filter media

The fundamental element in any filter is the medium through which the oil passes. Manufacturers say the media in premium filters have improved over the past few years to handle the demands of today’s new engines and severe driving conditions.

“Because of that, you’re going to find that some of your filter media are going towards synthetic and glass blends,” said Nunez.

But along with these synthetic filters comes a higher price tag. Cost conscious auto maintenance shop owners, who are living under tight profit margins, are often reluctant to spend the extra money. However, manufacturers say the new premium filters are worth it because they can trap smaller size particles of dirt and hold more of it.

“All filters at one time used to be a paper media and paper media is still used in a lot of second-line products,” said Wayne Smith product manager at Affinia Group, which manufactures Wix filters in Ayr, Ont. “New first-line or premium products all have a mixture of paper and synthetic materials to give it a finer micron and longer capacity. It is a blended media.”

“A lot of people are going with synthetic blend media which is a cellulose material blend and gives you a lot finer micron capacity,” said Smith. “The more a filter gets used, the smaller and the smaller the micron rating is on the filter. Your holes have a tendency to get plugged up.”

Filters are rated by the size of the particles they can trap. The particles are measured in microns. Filter manufacturers estimate that a micron is about a 39-millionth of an inch.

Manufacturers look at three tests for determining the efficiency filter media; the single pass efficiency test, the cumulative efficiency test and the multiple pass efficiency tests. The single pass determines how many particles are removed from the oil in one pass through the filter. The cumulative efficiency test measure how well the filter removes particles that have been added continuously to oil. The multiple pass efficiency is the most recently designed of the three and it determines the particle removal capacity of the filter over several passes through the filters.

“Our first line products start off at a rating of 19 microns to 25 microns,” said Smith. “The majority of companies are at 15 microns at 50 per cent efficient upon the new filter. That means they trap particles 15 microns or smaller 50 per cent of the time. You don’t want to get any smaller than that because what will happen is the filter will go on by-pass and there will be no filtration at all.”

Currie said with most car owners now going longer before changing their oil and filter, the multiple pass efficiency has become a priority in gauging the success of a filter.

“Most papers will catch filters the first time through, it’s on the tenth and the thousandth time through, are they still catching those tiny particles,” said Currie. And the fact that people are waiting longer, even if they are supposed to be changing their filter after 5,000 km and they know that. So the filter has to last that little bit extra time.”

Smith agrees that the multiple pass efficiency tests are the number to watch when evaluating a filter.

Technicians should keep that in mind when choosing and installing an oil filter in their customers’ vehicles. For many auto repair businesses, oil and filter change packages are not money making procedures. For example, Atwill, whose family has run its Ottawa-based repair business for more than 30 years, estimates performing oil and filter changes cost him almost twice what he charges when he factors in the type of filter he installs, the time of a licensed mechanic and the use of equipment. But, he adds, if using higher quality filters helps to keep a customer’s car running more efficiently on the road longer, then it helps his business’s credibility in the long run.

And that will be key because looking into the future, analysts such as DesRosier don’t see many car owners dropping their habit of keeping their cars on the road for a decade or longer.